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Twentieth Century 
Addresses 



GENERAL ASSEMBLY 

OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 

IN THE U. S. A. 



ACADEMY OF MUSIC 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

May 17, 1901 



PHILADELPHIA, PA.- 

Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work 

1902 



THE LIBRARY *F 
©©NGRESS, 

Two Cortts Receives 

MAY. 3 1902 


COPVRISHT 


ENTRY 


CLASS a : 


iq oi- 

>CXc. No. 


3 / 3 , 

COPY 


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B. 






,s, 






Copyright, 1902, by the Trnstees of 
The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath- 
School Work. 



Contents 



Introduction ...... 5 

By the Rev. W. H. Roberts, D.D., LL.D. 
Philadelphia, Pa. 

Review of the Nineteenth Century 15 

By the Rev. Prof. Willis Green Craig, D.D., LL.D., 

Chicago, Illinois. 

Progressive Development of the Presbyterian 

Church in the U. S. A. - - - - 51 

By the Rev. Henry Christopher McCook, D.D., Sc J)., 
Philadelphia, Pa. 

The Divine Purpose Developed in the Progress of 
Time ------- 133 

By the Rev. Henry Collin Minton, D. D., San An- 



The Problems of the Twentieth Century - - 153 

By the Rev. George Tybout Pnrves, D.D., LL.D., 

New York, N. Y. 

The Speedy Bringing of the World to Christ - 175 
By Mr. Robert Eliot Speer, New York, N. Y. 

3 



4 CONTENTS 

The Twentieth Century Movement. Report on the 

Memorial Fund - - - - 203 

Address on the Twentieth Century Fund - 219 

By the Rev. Marcus Acheson Brownson, D.D., Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

The Duty and Opportunities of the Presbyterian 
Church in the Twentieth Century - - 229 

By the Rev. Samuel Jack Niccolls, D.D., LL.D., 
St. Louis, Mo. 

Moderator's Sermon— "Fellow-workers unto the King- 
dom of God" 251 

By the Rev. Charles Andrews Dickey, D.D., 
Philadelphia, Pa. 



Introduction 



The General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church in the U. S. A., meeting at Minneapolis, 
Minn., May, 1899, had before it overtures and com- 
munications concerning a movement to be known as 
the Twentieth Century Celebration. In connection 
with these papers the Committee on Bills and Over- 
tures of that Assembly reported the following Pre- 
amble and Resolutions, which were unanimously 
adopted : — 

" Whereas, the century now drawing to a close 
has been one of signal blessing to the cause of 
Christ and to our Presbyterian Church, a time 
when the power of the Holy Spirit has been clearly 
manifest in extending and deepening the life and 
work of the Church, and 

"Whereas, the century soon to open presents 
to our Church unparalleled opportunities of service 
for the Master, therefore be it 

"Resolved, 1. That the General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., in session 
at Minneapolis, May, 1899, expresses its earnest de- 
sire to show in some fitting manner, our gratitude 

5 



6 INTRODUCTION 

for the mercies of the past and our consecration to 
the opportunities of the future. 

" Resolved, 2. That a Committee of six ministers 
and five elders be appointed by the Moderator to 
report to the next General Assembly as to the best 
method of fitly celebrating the close of the nine- 
teenth and the advent of the twentieth century." 

To carry out the above Kesolutions the Assembly 
appointed the following Committee on the Celebra- 
tion of the Twentieth Century : Ministers — Robert 
F. Sample, D. D., Loyal Y. Graham, D. D., Eobert 
K Adams, D. D., W. L. McEwan, D. D., Walter 
A. Brooks, D. B., Howard Duffield, D. D. ; Ruling 
Elders — Cyrus H. McCormick, John M. Harlan, 
John H. Converse, Henry C. Symmes, and F. Wol- 
cott Jackson. 

This special committee of the Assembly of 1899, 
reported through the Chairman, Rev. Robert F. 
Sample, D. D., to the Assembly of 1900, and its re- 
port was adopted. A part of the report reads : — 

"The Committee have held three meetings, and have carefully 
considered the important subject entrusted to their care. They 
feel that words are inadequate to express the richness of God ? s 
bounty to his people. The progress made by the Church of Christ 
in the U. S. A. during the century now closing is very great. Our 
own Presbyterian Church has increased from twenty thousand to 
one million communicants, and more than two million two hundred 
thousand persons have been received into our congregations on con- 
fession of faith in the course of the one hundred years. In the 
great missionary advance of the century, both on the home and 
foreign fields, our missionaries have been in the van, and the 



INTRODUCTION 7 

Church was so blessed of God that she could give during the 
period, to the work of saving souls, through the Board of Home 
Missions, $21,154,867, and through the Board of Foreign Missions, 
$25,150,086. The total of the missionary and benevolent contribu- 
tions of the Church from 1801 to 1900 exceeded $87,000,000. Such 
figures emphasize the truth that for the work of Christ in the 
world, America has been but another name for opportunity. ' Not 
unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for 
thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. ' The divine favor accorded 
in the past is a sure foundation of hope for and new endeavor in 
the future. 

"The Committee, after serious thought, feel that the Church, in 
connection with this historic period, should be summoned to praise 
and effort along three lines. First of all, there should be in our 
congregations a period of thanksgiving and prayer. This should 
be accompanied by a general effort for the strengthening of the 
financial interests of congregations and the extension of educational 
and missionary work. Having received from God so abundant a 
spiritual blessing, we should as a denomination manifest our 
gratitude by compliance with the scriptural command, ' Freely ye 
have received, freely give. ' In addition, it is believed that a pub- 
lic celebration, under the auspices of the General Assembly, would 
be a proper denominational tribute of praise to God, and an ap- 
propriate testimony to the world of the thankfulness of the Church 
for unnumbered mercies. 

"In connection with the proposed day of public celebration by the 
General Assembly, it is respectfully submitted that historical rea- 
sons should lead the Assembly to appoint the services in the City 
of Philadelphia. It was at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, nearly two hundred years ago, that the General Presby- 
tery of this Church was organized, in that city, and in the year 
1901 the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia will celebrate 
the two hundredth anniversary of the ordination of its first pastor. 
In the judgment of the Committee, it is highly appropriate that the 
Church should hold this historic celebration in the historic place in 
which, as an organized branch of the Church Universal, it was 
founded. 



8 INTRODUCTION 

1 ' The Committee, in view of the preceding considerations, there- 
fore recommend the adoption of the following Resolutions : — 

"Resolved, 1. That during the observance of the Week of 
Prayer in January, 1901, and also wherever practicable during the 
week following, there be a grateful recognition of the goodness of 
God to his Church during the nineteenth century, and earnest sup- 
plication for his continued blessing on the Church during the 
twentieth century. 

"Resolved, 2. That the first Friday of the General Assembly's 
sessions in 1901 be set apart for special services in connection with 
the advent of the twentieth century — the morning session to be oc- 
cupied with the review of the history of the Church during the 
nineteenth century ; the afternoon session, with the outlook for the 
twentieth century ; much of the time during these sessions to be 
devoted to prayer and praise ; and the evening session to be of a 
popular character, with addresses appropriate to the occasion. 

' ' Resolved, 3. That a special memorial fund, to be known as the 
Twentieth Century Fund, be raised for the endowment of Presby- 
terian academic, collegiate and theological institutions, for the en- 
largement of missionary enterprises, for the erection of church 
buildings and the payment of debts upon churches and educational 
institutions, and for the other work of the Boards, at the option of 
the donors ; contributions to specific objects to be strictly regarded, 
and contributions to the general work to be distributed according 
to the proportions which have been designated by our General As- 
sembly as applying to miscellaneous offerings ; and care shall be 
taken that this special effort shall in no way conflict with or 
diminish the regular contributions to the treasuries of the several 
Boards. 

" Resolved, 4. That in connection with the Fund a central com- 
mittee be appointed, to consist of six ministers and five elders, 
whose headquarters shall be in Philadelphia ; which committee 
shall have a general supervision of the work, shall publish ap- 
propriate literature for the furtherance of the object, making the 
widest possible distribution of the same, all expenses to be met out 
of the general contributions ; and that the Stated Clerk of the Gen- 
eral Assembly be appointed Treasurer of the Fund, to serve 



INTRODUCTION 9 

without expense, except for such clerical assistance as may be re- 
quired. 

" Resolved, 5. That for the reasons stated the General Assembly 
of 1901 meet in the City of Philadelphia." 

The Committee also reported a Programme for 
the proposed public Celebration, and recommended 
" that a Special Committee of five, including the 
officers of the Assembly, be appointed to take 
charge of the Celebration, with power to attend to 
all matters connected therewith." The Committee 
as appointed was composed of — Ministers — Charles 

A. Dickey, D. D., Wm. Henry Koberts, D. D., fra. 

B. Noble, D. D. ; Ruling Elders — John Wanamaker, 
Wm. H. Scott. 

The Committee thus appointed reported to the 
General Assembly of 1901 (see Minutes, p. 14) that 
" acting in accordance with the authority conferred," 
they had "arranged that the celebration should 
take place at the Academy of Music," Philadelphia, 
at the hours and with the speakers named by the 
Assembly of 1900, with the exception that the Kev. 
Henry van Dyke, D. D., having declined to accept 
the place assigned to him in the programme, owing 
to the pressure of other duties, it had been arranged 
that the report of the Committee on the Twentieth 
Century Fund should be presented on Friday even- 
ing. The report of the Committee was approved. 

The Public Celebration thus arranged for was 
held as appointed, and was in all respects acceptable 
and successful. The audiences were large, en- 



10 INTRODUCTION 

thusiastic and representative. The General Com- 
mittee of Arrangements for the Assembly of 1901, 
composed of leading Philadelphians, cooperated 
heartily and efficiently with the Assembly's Com- 
mittee, and much of the success attained was due to 
their efforts. The Programme of the Celebration 
was as follows : — 



PUBLIC CELEBKATION OF THE ADVENT OF THE 

ETH CENTURY, 

MAY, 17, 1901. 



Morning Session, 9 : 30 a. m. 

John H. Converse, LL. D., Chairman. 

Long Meter Doxology — " Praise God, from Whom 
All Blessings Flow." 

Prayer — By the Moderator of the General Assembly. 

Scripture — Eev. Geo. B. Stewart, D. D., Auburn, 
1ST. Y. 

Address— " Keview of the Nineteenth Century," 
Kev. Willis G. Craig, D. D., LL. D., Chicago, 111. 

Hymn 300—" I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord." 

Prayer— -Kev. D. J. Sanders, D. D., Charlotte, 

K C. 

Address—" Progress of the Presbyterian Church in 
the Nineteenth Century," Kev. Henry C. 
McCook, D. D., Sc. D., Philadelphia, Pa. 



INTRODUCTION 11 

Prayer— Kev. J. P. E. Kumler, D. D., Pittsburg, Pa. 

Hymn 298 — " Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken." 

Benediction — Rev. L. Merrill Miller, D. D., Ogdens- 
burg, 1ST. Y. 

Afteenoon Session, 2 : 30 p. m. 

Eev. E. R. Burkhalter, D. D., of Iowa, Chairman. 

Hymn 524—" Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah." 

Prayer — Rev. Herrick Johnson, D. D., Chicago, 111. 

Address — "The Divine Purpose Developed in the 
Progress of Time," Rev. Henry Collin Minton, 
D. D., San Anselmo, Cal. 

Hymn 225—" In the Cross of Christ I Glory." 

Prayer — Rev. Samuel M. Hamilton, D. D., Engle- 
wood, 1ST. J. 

Address— "The Problems of the Twentieth Cen- 
tury," Rev. George T. Purves, D. D., LL. D., 
New York, K Y. 

Hymn 503 — " Christian, Seek not Yet Repose." 

Prayer— Rev. William H. James, D. D., Spring- 
dale, Ohio. 

Address — " The Speedy Bringing of the World to 
Christ," Mr. Robert E. Speer, New York, K Y. 

Prayer — Rev. J. Milton Greene, D. D., Porto 
Rico. 

Hymn 386—" The Morning Light is Breaking." 

Benediction — Rev. John N. Forman, Fatehgarh, 
India. 



12 INTRODUCTION 

Evening Session, 8 p. m. 

Hon. John Wanamaker, Chairman. 

Anthem — " Jubilate Deo," by the Young People's 
Choir, Mr. James Morrison, Jr., Conductor. 

Hymn 425— " Blest Be the Tie that Binds." 

Prayer — Kev. H. A. Ketchum, D. 1)., Salem, Oreg. 

Report — Committee on the Twentieth Century 
Fund. 

Addresses — Rev. M. A. Brownson, D. D., and Rev. 
Charles A. Dickey, D. D. 

Hymn 347—" Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus." 

Prayer— Rev. J. D. Moffat, D. D., Washington, Pa. 

Address — "The Opportunity and Duty of the 
Presbyterian Church in the Twentieth Cen- 
tury," Rev. Samuel J. Mccolls, D. D., LL. D., 
St. Louis, Mo. 

Anthem by the Choir — " The Recessional." 

Prayer — Rev. S. Hall Young, D. D., Alaska. 

Hymn 370 — " Onward, Christian Soldiers." 

Benediction— Rev. W. H. W. Boyle, D. D., Colorado 

Springs, Col. 

The Committee on the Celebration presented to 
the Assembly the recommendation " that the Stated 
Clerk be directed and authorized to defray the ex- 
penses of the meeting, and that he also be em- 
powered to prepare a volume containing the ad- 
dresses delivered upon this occasion, the same to be 
published by the Board of Publication and Sabbath- 



INTRODUCTION 13 

School- Work." The recommendation was adopted. 

One notable feature of the Celebration was an 
Historical and Missionary exhibit arranged in the 
Academy of Fine Arts, illustrating the history of 
the Presbyterian Church and the progress of its 
missionary work during the nineteenth century. 
This exhibit set forth in an admirable and striking 
manner the work of all the Missionary and Benevo- 
lent Boards as well as the general History of the 
Church, and the gentleman to whose knowledge, 
skill and energy it was largely due, is the Kev. 
Henry C. McCook, D. D., Sc. D., pastor of the 
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. 
With Dr. McCook were associated other Ministers 
and Elders who cordially cooperated with him. 

Special recognition is also made of the excellent 
services of the Chorus Choir, composed of young 
people, organized by the Eev. C. M. Alford, D. D., 
and led by Mr. James Morrison, Jr. 

The General Assembly made record of its satis- 
faction over the Celebration, and tendered to the 
speakers, the chairmen, and all who participated 
therein, its profound sense of gratitude. 

The Church is indebted to the Board of Publi- 
cation and Sabbath-School Work, and to the officers 
of the Board, for their hearty cooperation in this as 
in all the work of the Church, and for the admirable 
manner in which this volume of addresses has been 
carried through the press. 

Wm. Henry Kobeets. 



REVIEW OF THE NINETEENTH CEN- 
TURY 



BY THE 

Rev. WILLIS GREEN CRAIG, D. D., LL. D. 



■ f '"■/*•■ 



REVIEW OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY 

BY THE 

Eev. WILLIS GREEN CRAIG, D. D., LL. D. 



Mr. Moderator, Mr. Chairman, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : — 

It has been well said that, " the dawn of a new 
century affords a natural occasion for a retrospect 
into the past, for the taking of stock of the world's 
gain and loss, for a comparison of the world as we 
see it to-day, with its condition as it was known to 
our ancestors a hundred years ago." 

The task imposed by this review is a difficult one. 
The period under consideration embraces the life- 
time of three ordinary generations of men. The 
achievements of the century, as compared with all 
past time, border on the marvelous. The move- 
ment, especially in the latter half of the period, is 
so rapid, and upon lines of such far-reaching im- 
portance, that the reviewer is confused, if not ap- 
palled, as he undertakes his task. The problems 
handed over by the nineteenth to the twentieth 
century are so various, so grave and so far from 

2 17 



18 TWENTIETH CENTDEY ADDRESSES 

solution, that we look with awe upon the mighty 
things that have been done, in the light of the 
solemn duties that they impose upon those who 
must conduct the race along the perilous path of the 
era that has just dawned. And, above all, the 
time allowed for this discussion is so brief, as to all 
but guarantee inadequate treatment. But without 
further words we may enter upon our task. 

In order that we may understand the distinctive 
and influential movements of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, let us observe the situation of the great 
nations of the earth at its opening. 

M. Jules Roche in an article in the Paris Figaro, 
has given us an accurate outline of the population 
of the great nations, of what is called "active 
humanity," at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. There is little resemblance between the 
Europe of 1801 and the Europe of to-day. The 
names of the larger states are the same, but they 
describe very different entities. The population 
of France with its new and natural boundaries was 
33,000,000. Russia had but 36,000,000, mostly un- 
civilized. The United Kingdom had only 16,000,000. 
The old German empire, which was then but a 
political expression — having crumbled before the 
arms of France, — contained in its 300 constituent 
states, but 25,000,000. Austria and Hungary had 
as many. There was no Italy. The Kingdom of 
Sardinia had less than 3,000,000. The States of the 
Church, less than 3,000,000. The Kingdom of 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 19 

Naples, almost 5,000,000. The Grand Duchy of 
Tuscany, 1,000,000. On this side of the Atlantic, 
our country with its 5,000,000 inhabitants was the 
only one whose numbers were known. The popu- 
lation of what may be called the outlying peoples 
was unknown. The facts as to these nations were 
but feebly grasped, and no special account taken of 
them as forces to be considered in the ongoing of 
human civilization. 

One hundred years ago " active humanity " num- 
bered less than 175,000,000. 

Consider the political condition of the " active 
peoples " at the opening of the nineteenth century. 

The most terrific outburst of human passion 
against a grinding, pitiless, long-continued tyranny 
of king and ruling classes that the world has ever 
known, made memorable the closing years of the 
eighteenth century. The French people with a 
shout of wild agony had rushed for the throat of 
authority, had seized and strangled it to death. 
The nation raised its bloody hands to heaven and 
swore a mighty oath, that kings and nobles, ruling 
classes, tyrants, all destroyers of human liberty, and 
wanton enemies of all rational happiness, should 
exist no more. Out from the murderous riot and 
deadly killing of those awful revolution days, there 
issued the note of human aspiration, and hope for 
man, as man, and the maddened throng, even in the 
midst of the frenzied tumult of unchecked passion, 
demanded that liberty, equality, and fraternity, 



20 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

should henceforth be the watchwords of human 
society. 

If the aspiration was lawful, and the expression 
of it had anything of the true and the practicable in 
it, the time was not yet, and the people had not 
arrived by whom it could be brought to realization. 
As our century opened, a gigantic spirit arose, 
almost unparalleled among men, voracious in his 
selfishness, far-seeing in vision, conscienceless in 
thought and corresponding act, resistless in power, 
who laid hold of the storm of human passion, guided 
it for a time along its purposed path, and then, 
with all but magical skill, turned it away from its 
origins, and required it to do his bidding, as he led 
it along the highway of his enormous ambitions, 
looking to personal glory and unrestrained power. 
Under the leadership of the great Napoleon, Europe 
blazed with war for the first dozen years of the 
nineteenth century ; war which left human rights, 
happiness and even life out of sight, and which 
threatened the very foundations of public order and 
rational government. Progress toward better things 
for humanity at large ; for the imposition and exe- 
cution of just and humane laws; for sane education, 
which levels up the people as a mass toward civic 
righteousness and levels down rulers into a love for 
subjects and to a rightful exercise of acknowledged 
authority, did not begin in Europe at the beginning 
of our century. Another country was designated of 
God to discover and express the ultimate principles 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 21 

of human freedom, to establish these principles in 
abiding constitutional forms, and then to set them 
in practical operation through administrative 
agencies, for the happiness of its own people, as a 
beacon light for the oppressed in every land, and 
for the slow but sure instruction of the nations as to 
the rights of man, the necessary presupposition of 
human dignity, progress, and true happiness. That 
nation, our beloved land, thus summoned to this 
august enterprise, had assumed the commanding 
form of national life only a few short years before 
the nineteenth century opened. The scars of the 
embattled farmers who had won the prize of 
political freedom against enormous odds had hardly 
healed when the new century was called to begin 
its eventful course. 

The new-born nation was few in numbers, all but 
impoverished by a long-continued devouring war, 
scattered over immense tracts of but partially set- 
tled territory, hemmed in by the sea on the one 
side and by unbroken primeval forests on the other, 
threatened day and night by savage tribes em- 
bittered by wrongs which they could not forget, 
and with every species of administrative perplexity 
clamoring for speedy settlement, with an untried 
instrument of government waiting to be expounded 
and illustrated by action, fitted to secure the lib- 
erties that had been purchased at such a costly 
price of blood and treasure. Who could say that the 
new nation would live? Or who would dare to 



22 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

imagine that, ere the century closed, it would forge 
to the side of the foremost nations in the world, and 
even challenge them, one and all, for the leadership 
in whatever makes a nation great in learning, in 
resources, in power, in numbers and in influence, 
wherever and whenever the mightiest world powers 
are gathered for debate and decision as to the des- 
tinies of the race ? And yet there need have been 
no uneasy questioning, for the young nation was 
designate of God. It came into national being at 
the appointed time. It was quick with living prin- 
ciples. It had obtained a stage for action, in its 
national possessions, broad enough to act out a 
mighty play before the world at large. A few 
leading spirits in England and on the continent, 
whose unclouded vision could in some real sense 
pierce the future, saw the promised potency of the 
newcomer among the nations, and they were glad. 
As for the most, they sat sullen, and prophesied 
evil. 

We do not hesitate to say that the appearance 
on the scene of organized national life of our nation 
was the greatest single event in the world's history 
at the opening of the nineteenth century. 

Concerning the lands and peoples outside of what 
I have called " active humanity," there is nothing 
of historical importance to record. When the year 
1801 was first written on our calendars, bold voy- 
agers had touched remote islands and distant ports. 
They had coasted the shores of unknown lands. A 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 23 

little trade here and a little there, sufficient to 
awaken the cupidity of the adventurers, but not 
great enough to stimulate arduous and sustained 
exploration. The knowledge of the outlying peo- 
ples was hopelessly inadequate, and consequently 
invalid. 

A single people, China, ancient and mighty, with 
a population outnumbering, in point of fact, the 
entirety of the progressive peoples, was lying in 
hermit-like isolation, exclusive, and excluding all 
other men from its hoary precincts, and barely per- 
mitting approach to its outermost harbors. The 
real Africa, was " Terra Incognita." Even the old 
central seats of human life, from whence came the 
impetuous hordes that seized and settled Europe, 
had retreated from the gaze of civilized man, or, at 
most, remained an intangible reality, indefinite to 
thought, unknown as to conquest, commerce or 
evangelization. 

India with its teeming millions, its recondite phi- 
losophy, its ascetic religion, its damaging system of 
caste, its fabulous wealth, was in the way of being 
exploited by a greedy commercial company, which 
looked down with haughty contempt on the soft- 
mannered natives, and sought, not them, but their 
possessions, their jewels, their gold, their lands, 
their very homes, founded by ancestors whose blood 
had run pure for a thousand years. 

Even the Spanish Americans to the south of us 
were an uncensused people, and counted for little 



24 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

in the plans, the operations, and the general out- 
look, of the dominant nations at the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. Such was the political and 
territorial aspect of the world 100 years ago. 

Next think upon the condition of letters at the 
opening of the century and its earliest years. 

The brilliant lights of eighteenth century letters 
were still shining when our century dawned. Addi- 
son, Steele, Johnson, Gibbon, Garrick, and Keynolds, 
had passed away ; but their influence was not lost. 
We may find polish and sentiment, striving after a 
true ethic, a certain seeking unto God on the part 
of the essayist. The tone of the poet was often 
well modulated and sweet, the aspirations lofty, 
and the opinions just, but the singers were chanting 
to a narrow audience and the verse moved within 
a restricted circle. The world's peoples were far 
away, closed out from the thinker's thoughts, de- 
barred from his sympathies, by the apparent unre- 
ality of their existence. The historian studied with 
unwearied industry the memorials of classic an- 
tiquity. He led his patient reader into the byways 
of Greek and Eoman life, and traced their adven- 
turous steps along the highways of splendid national 
achievements ; but their national life was of the 
past, their glory faded, their significance to be 
measured by the value of the lessons which might 
be drawn from an extinguished career. 

Living nations, incredible as to numbers, hoary 
with age, vital with living forces, waiting to be 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 25 

called, were unknown, and the polished essayist, 
the painstaking historian, the learned publicist, the 
impassioned poet, had no word for them, — their 
hour had not struck. Letters, no matter how bril- 
liant, arising out of the bosom of "active humanity," 
could not reach to them, could not even find them. 
Another and a different agency must be summoned 
before the world of men could be brought face to 
face in order to mutual acquaintance and common 
benefits. Will the nineteenth century find the 
agency, while all past generations have failed to 
discover it ? 

Let us pass now to consider the condition of 
Christianity as to numbers, organization, spiritual 
vigor, range of effort, general ideals, and practical 
plans for the extension of the gospel in the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the period just 
preceding the dawn of the nineteenth century was 
one of the darkest in the history of the Christian 
Church, and perhaps the darkest in the history of 
Protestantism. A reliable historian informs us, 
" that the Protestantism of the Eeformation seemed 
almost to have spent its force. It had wasted itself 
in internal conflicts, lost its independence by part- 
nership with the State, and minimized its influence 
by an alliance with nationalism, moderatism, and 
a destructive worldliness. In Great Britain the 
Wesleyan movement had not reached a dominative 
position. Presbyterianism in that realm was all 



26 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

but extinct, the English Established Church was 
negative in doctrinal teachings, formal in religious 
life, immersed in worldliness. On the continent 
torpor reigned, and Christian activity seemed a 
thing of the past. In America the feeble Christian 
life was sorely taxed in a struggle for self-preserva- 
tion. One hundred years ago the aggressive power 
of Protestantism was reduced to its minimum. The 
science, the philosophy, and the culture, of that age 
were almost wholly against evangelical Christianity. 
Never before nor since has infidelity combined rela- 
tively so much wealth, culture and power. Hume's 
nameless blasphemies, Voltaire's brilliant wit and 
amazing industry, and the French Kevolution with 
its mighty sweep of radical revolt, combined to 
subvert the popular belief in Christianity and brand 
the Church as a creature of superstition and false- 
hood. In the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury this revolt struggled hard to maintain its 
ground and even to push the struggle on to the 
complete destruction of Christianity." Even after 
1817, we are told, in the course of a few years 
nearly 6,000,000 volumes of the works of Voltaire 
and Kousseau and other infidel writers, besides 
countless tracts, were circulated on the continent 
of Europe. Was there ever such a whirlwind of 
destructive forces raging at one time against the 
kingdom of our Lord ? 

To offset this we have in 1790, in the way of 
aggressive Christianity, only three foreign mis- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 27 

sionary societies in Europe, and none in America. 
In the last ten years of the eighteenth century 
five additional foreign missionary societies were 
founded. These new societies, however, at first 
encountered great unbelief and opposition from 
many in the Churches, and ridicule from the world. 
Ecclesiastical bodies in Scotland denounced the 
scheme of foreign missions as illusive, visionary 
and dangerous, and decreed that it was absurd to 
think of propagating the gospel abroad, so long as 
there remained a single individual at home without 
the means of religious knowledge. 

Under these general conditions abroad and at 
home the nineteenth century opened. What will 
the human race accomplish during the course of the 
single century which we call the nineteenth ? 
There was no prophet to foretell. ]STo poet could 
have even fancied the mighty things to be accom- 
plished in a single century. The past furnished no 
patterns for the work now to be attempted. The 
materials for a picture of the coming years were 
not within the grasp, nor even within the knowl- 
edge, of men. The human intellect was alive, 
vigorous and disciplined. Man was in the midst of 
his environments. But he had not made their ac- 
quaintance. Me may learn what is about him, and 
then a new movement will begin. The breath of 
the Spirit must blow upon man, if the new century 
is to move forward to any wider knowledge, to any 
real advance along the highway of Christian de- 



28 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

velopment, to any worthy deeds looking to the real 
fulfillment of Christ's great commission to disciple 
all nations. 

The first great lesson that is impressed upon the 
student of the beginning of the nineteenth century 
is that nothing more of prime importance can be 
done to lift the race along an upward way looking 
to ultimate victory over the super-abounding evils 
that afflict this world, save in the power of a fresh 
and abounding baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is 
the old, old lesson — away from God, life in the 
mere energy of the flesh, and the race sinks back 
into moral corruption and consequent weakness, 
even though there be the glamour of wealth and 
the semblance of power. The needed baptism of 
the Spirit came in the early years of the century. 
Moderatism died the death in Scotland. Evan- 
gelical religion as the fruit of organized Wesleyan- 
ism in Great Britain, and the far-reaching revivals 
in this country, changed the face of things at home 
and abroad. Great religious organizations, fitted 
for the mighty tasks of a world-wide evangeliza- 
tion, began to take shape. Men were soon think- 
ing of spiritual conquests on a scale never con- 
sidered before. They laid the foundations deep, 
and inlaid them with principles pertinent to uni- 
versal conquests. Mere local benefits no longer 
controlled the thinking and planning of Christian 
men. As we look back, we are amazed to observe 
the comprehensive principles which guided the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 29 

organizing movements intended to propagate the 
gospel which the Christian fathers in the early days 
of the century undertook and perfected. They 
were, comparatively speaking, a localized generation 
— provincial we would say now — out of touch with 
the world qua world. But the mere local concep- 
tion of things did not predominate in their thought 
as they wrought out the framework of their 
religious societies. Universality of Christian 
knowledge, Christian discipleship, and Christian 
benefits, guided their arduous endeavors and in- 
fluenced their widening sympathies. They did not 
know accurately the mighty numbers of the world's 
teeming population, but they thought out toward 
them and stretched out their hands over the vast 
spaces of the habitable globe, ready to bless what- 
ever distant tribe or nation might be found. 

Let us glance at the great Christian organizations 
which were founded in the early days of the nine- 
teenth century. The British and Foreign Bible 
Society, intended to supply the world with the Word 
of God without note or comment, was founded in 
1804, in America in 1816. What spiritual insight 
these men had into the deepest, most regulative 
facts concerning God and sinful, needy man and 
the only reconciling middle term between God and 
needy man, Christ the Lord, when they laid the 
foundation of these glorious agencies for the dis- 
semination of the gospel, for the healing of the 
nations ! If they had been able to see the de- 



30 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

mands that would be made upon their societies, 
they might have shrunk back in dismay from 
the mere magnitude of the task. What strange 
and difficult languages and dialects will be en- 
countered as exploration proceeds, separating the 
new peoples, though discovered, from the influence 
and benevolent disposition of the discoverers ? 
Who shall read to them in their own tongue, or ex- 
plain, when read, the wonderful things of God? 
Who shall undertake to break down this seemingly 
impassable barrier of differing tongues ? The 
forces behind the great Bible Societies will do it, 
even in the energy of the Spirit. New tongues will 
be conquered. Endless dialects shall be forced to 
submit to indomitable human intelligence working 
toward the highest ends. The universal Word of 
God, made known in every tongue spoken among 
the divided families of men, shall prove to be the 
final argument to establish the unity of the race, 
and upon the great acknowledged facts, stimulate 
the supreme undertaking of the ages, to wit : — the 
evangelization of the world. 

Early in the century commenced the organization 
of the great missionary societies throughout Chris- 
tendom. Then the cultivation of benevolence that 
the way might be cleared for the advance. Then 
a devout Christian literature, informing the Chris- 
tian nations as to the wide range of the purpose of 
grace, was brought to bear on the great problems 
of missionary labor. Then the organization of edu- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 31 

cation, looking to a wide, yea, an universal training 
of men as rational, knowing subjects, destined for 
higher things than mere physical life. Foundations 
for higher education and for professional training, 
challenging the liberality of benevolent people to 
an unprecedented extent, were laid deep and wide, 
indicating the coming time when men will be 
needed with every faculty developed, and seeking a 
content of information fitted to startle coming gen- 
erations with its extent and variety. So matters 
stand as we cross the middle line of the nineteenth 
century. 

And yet the real movement to encircle the globe 
with light and life tarried. The world-wide problem 
of universal evangelization and civilization has not 
been yet fairly confronted. The populations of the 
earth as such stand aloof. Isolation still holds the 
world of men in its grasp. Great nations live far 
away, and lonely, locked in the embrace of remote- 
ness. The forces of awakened humanity cannot 
circulate throughout the whole body of mankind. 
Men are not in touch. What will meet this grave 
necessity, and overcome it ? 

Then it was that science awoke from its torpor 
and entered upon its momentous task. Man was in 
contact with the world, but he did not know it. 
He had seen steam rising from boiling water, had 
confined it, and utilized it for a few common and 
servile tasks, but he had no conception of its amaz- 



32 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

ing possibilities. He had felt the shock and wit- 
nessed the brightness of the electric spark in some 
secluded laboratory. He had seen it blazing along 
the sky, now in eccentric forked forms, now in 
sheets of blinding glare, but he had never dreamed 
that it could be harnessed and made to do man's 
bidding like a child. The men of that day had heard 
the human voice in all its varied and charming 
tones, the soft music of a mother's song soothing 
her child to sleep, the ravishing notes of some en- 
trancing singer giving utterance to the resistless 
passion of the human heart, through music's subtle 
harmonies. He had heard the orator awakening, 
thrilling, convincing, guiding men to high thoughts 
and mighty deeds in behalf of home, altar and na- 
tive land, but he had never dreamed that the human 
voice could reach a thousand miles, though spoken 
in the modulated tones fitted for immediate per- 
sonal intercourse. He had seen waving fields of 
golden grain gathered by the slow and painful 
process of the sickle or the cradle, but never had he 
dreamed of the mighty harvesters moving with re- 
sistless force over miles of continuous fields, and 
bringing to completion in a day the mighty tasks 
which then demanded weeks in the performance. 
As a people our fathers had crossed the sea, the 
bold spirits among them had drawn away from the 
shores of old ocean, and had turned their faces to- 
ward the west, bent upon the exploration of the 
far-reaching primitive forests, the lofty mountains, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 33 

the persuasive valleys, the water courses which 
threaded the vast expanse guaranteeing life and 
fruitfulness to the teeming soil. But how had they 
moved here, as everywhere? By the slow and un- 
certain sailing vessel over tractless wastes of water. 
On land, by foot, on horseback, or by the lumber- 
ing wagons, or by stage coach over unleveled roads, 
creeping as a snail. What distance had they 
reached ? They were still skirting the outer edge 
of this vast continent. "Transportation" was in 
its childhood, though the race was already old. 

The people of different continents were separated 
by the impregnable barriers of " distance," and 
rumors of " other peoples," their existence, their 
habits, their numbers, their powers and their 
wealth, were unknown, or, at the most, the doubt- 
ful accounts of other lands and peoples brought in 
by some intrepid but infrequent traveler, formed 
the material for conclusions, scanty and misleading 
at best, concerning vast sections of the earth and 
its inhabitants. As a race, all of one blood with 
like passions and similar needs, men had never 
faced each other. What can Bible societies and 
mission boards and hospitals and improved print- 
ing presses and more accurate education, and better 
medical and surgical knowledge and practice, and 
more scriptural views of the Christian obligation to 
a universal evangelization, accomplish, if we do 
not know the nations, if we cannot come face to 
face with them ? Practically to obey Christ's last 

3 



34 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

command, we mast annihilate distance. We must 
stand in the presence of men, found out in their 
homes by persistent exploration, and to be dealt 
with as near neighbors. To do this, nature must 
be subjugated. 

At this point, and for this tremendous task, nat- 
ural science commenced its mighty career. The 
men of science have made nothing ; they have sim- 
ply discovered what was already made and waiting 
to be found and utilized. These great forces or 
laws of nature, which they have discovered, com- 
bined and applied to useful ends, were always pres- 
ent in nature, since the great Creator had called 
the world into existence. God knew these laws, as 
he knows his chosen, whose names are written on 
the palms of his hands. As the patient scientist 
made a discovery, and then with inventive skill, 
applied it to some marvelous end, before which even 
the most enlightened of the progressive peoples 
bowed in utter astonishment, be it known that this 
was but a commonplace to God. He had always 
known the principle and its possible effects, when 
mastered by man and combined with other great 
principles, and properly guided. The great, ra- 
tional, supreme Spirit, Creator and Governor of the 
universe gave his special revelations to men in the 
full knowledge of all great laws, and what they 
could be made to accomplish. His gracious plan 
of redemption was purposed in full sight of what 
we call the secrets of the universe. They were no 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 35 

secrets to him. The lines along which the gospel 
must be propagated, the knowledge of the world 
which must be gained by men before the great con- 
quests of the Cross could be consummated, all these 
were known to God, were designated to their 
proper time. He sent great men developed by ages 
of mental toil to find the always existing laws 
of nature, not simply for their intrinsic value, but 
as a needed preparation for something higher, as 
adjuncts for work in a nobler sphere. 

Some of the men of our day look upon these bril- 
liant discoveries of science simply as dazzling won- 
ders, to be admired for their own sake, and rested 
in as the ultimate benefit. These are mistaken. If 
we would weigh accurately the products of human 
genius, when the maximum has been reached, when 
every law of the realm of nature has been appre- 
hended and put to man's service, we must still ask 
the question : Will these great results, taken as a 
possession, satisfy the needs and aspirations of 
moral, responsible, immortal agents ? The answer 
comes swiftly : Kay, nay, they cannot. Truly let 
us agree, this marvelous subjugation of nature is 
but a means to an end. It is intended to compass 
the purposes of grace, to bring to completion the 
kingdom of God among men. 

The triumphs of science, especially in the last half 
of the nineteenth century, merit mention in some 
detail. Well has it been said, " The sternest grapple 
with the forces of nature ever known among men 



36 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

has been witnessed in the last fifty years." Man is 
the undoubted head of the earthly series. He has 
made long strides in the assertion of his dominion 
over the earth upon which he dwells. The struggle 
for mastery has been gallant and inspiring to the 
last degree. He has sought for reality, and by 
better processes than were known in earlier times. 
He has had, in part at least, his due reward. Fact 
after fact has been brought to light and properly 
correlated. The earnest students of nature have 
often made mistakes by hastening to conclusions 
upon a too narrow anthology of particulars, but 
they have been ready to retreat from untenable 
positions, and to continue the search for fact with 
unwearied patience. The votaries of science have 
once and again plunged into domains of thought 
for which their peculiar studies afforded them no 
fitness of preparation, and concerning which they 
had no competent knowledge, and so have essayed 
the impossible task of destroying fact in one depart- 
ment of human knowledge, with fact obtained from 
another and different department. But the folly of 
such a procedure has been easily demonstrated, and 
the giants of material science have been made to 
know that man does not live by bread alone, and 
that the rational, the spiritual dominates the ma- 
terial. Otherwise they could not have discovered 
their own facts. But with all the mistakes that 
have been made, and after all the hard and false 
applications of scientific facts, so-called, to other and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 37 

nobler regions of truth into which human thinkers 
must necessarily go, what a debt do we owe to the 
patience, ability, learning, and truthfulness, of the 
natural and physical scientists, who have labored 
and produced so wonderfully in the last half of the 
century which we have under review. To rightly 
appreciate the marvelous achievements of science 
we may first of all consider the supreme question 
of " Transportation." In the year 1801, the people 
of the world, we are reminded, were still using the 
same means of locomotion that were known to the 
most ancient times, and the speed that they could 
make was that of the sailing vessel, the horse, or 
the ox, the camel, or the elephant. My own father 
rode horseback from central Kentucky to Lexing- 
ton, Virginia, to pursue his studies in what is now 
called the Washington and Lee University. "When 
his collegiate studies were complete, he rode horse- 
back to Philadelphia, in company with merchants, 
to attend medical lectures under the renowned pro- 
fessors, Physic and Eush. This journey he accom- 
plished in this manner two successive years, return- 
ing each year by the same method of travel to his 
distant home. We can hardly realize that we are 
so close to the old modes of travel, and our astonish- 
ment is heightened when we recall the fact, that 
for fifty-seven centuries the world had been at a 
standstill in these respects. Under such restrictions 
the race of man could not realize its solidarity. 
And now what has science and invention wrought 



38 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

in this interest in the last fifty years ? You may 
well look with awe upon your railways, climbing 
every mountain and threading every valley, and 
your steamships plowing every sea, hurrying men 
with incredible rapidity from the outermost con- 
fines of the earth to any chosen center, and then 
scattering them back as by magic to their distant 
homes : distributing the products of the surface 
and the bowels of the earth to every corner of the 
habitable globe, in masses that stagger the imagina- 
tion. 

We may look upon the telegraph and telephone 
lines, as they bind up the inhabitants of all lands 
with bands of steel and copper, with ever growing 
amazement, and exclaim, " We are dwelling in won- 
derland." Nay, we are at home in the same old 
dwelling place that our fathers knew ; only science 
has found out a few facts, always existent, which 
our ancestors had not even imagined, and lo, the 
face of the world has changed, and men have been 
transformed as at the touch of a magician's wand. 
See the printing presses which will yield 1,500 book 
impressions an hour, and for newspapers, printing 
both sides of the sheet, folding and delivering at the 
rate of from 10,000 to 20,000 an hour. The inven- 
tions in the agricultural department: the plows, 
the reaping and mowing machines, the cotton gin. 
The mining drills and ore separators. The ice 
machines turning the tropics into the North Pole in 
a single particular. The mail facilities which dis- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 39 

tribute private letters and printed literature to 
every breakfast table in the civilized world. The 
vast geological inquiries which have discovered the 
earth beneath its crust, and made its secrets below 
almost as plain as the surface facts. In the field of 
optics and acoustics : the polarization of light, the 
solar spectrum, the spectroscope, the X-rays, the 
phenomena of vibration, the physiology of hear- 
ing, the physical causes of the quality of sounds, 
the phonograph. Our scientists have climbed the 
skies and walked among planets and stars, at ease. 

Medical discoveries have eased the race from a 
thousand ills that tormented our fathers who lived 
their lives out unremedied. Surgery with its ether, 
chloroform, cocaine, its " surgical cleanliness," and 
its bold but safe skill, has penetrated with its 
relieving knife to the very vitals of the body. But 
why use our allotted time with further enumeration 
of scientific discovery ? These are not the common- 
places gathered from current accounts. Volumes 
are filled with the details, so vast, so beneficial, so 
striking that we retire from the reading all but con- 
fused with the riches of result. 

The subjugation of nature to which the vast 
increase in human population, in power, in material 
welfare, is due, owes but little, as has been well 
said, to arms, to emperors, to legislatures, to gov- 
ernments. The true potentates have been the men 
of inventive genius, of devotion to science, whose 
discoveries and whose energies have renovated the 



40 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

earth, and knit its remote parts together. They 
have made greater changes than all the princes, all 
the conquests, all the foundations and all the falls 
of kingdoms and empires. The men of ideas have 
come to the front. Honor to whom honor is due. 

But we may well ask, in what atmosphere was 
this scientific genius bred? What soil produced 
the men of ideas ? The resistless impulse of Chris- 
tian thinking stirred the sons of Christian lands to 
these mighty tasks. They are found in no other 
land. Christianity has its final aims, and its 
directive agencies. When nature needed to be 
interrogated more fully in furtherance of these 
aims, the inquiry commenced in earnest, under 
provisions made by Christianity itself, and the 
answers were prompt to come in. The Christian 
Church well knows how to adapt and to utilize 
them, as their truthfulness is made clear, for the 
accomplishment of her divinely commanding task, 
even though some of her most able and efficient work- 
ers have been blinded to the higher truth by the 
brilliancy of mere earthly lights. 

Let us now estimate, in a general way, the most 
important gains for humanity, during the nineteenth 
century. 

1. Increase of population of so-called Christian 
nations. To-day France, with contracted limits, 
numbers 38,000,000. England has 41,000,000. The 
new German empire has 56,000,000. Austria, 45,- 
000,000. Kussia perhaps 135,000,000. Italy has 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 41 

32,000,000. The United States 72,000,000. Tak- 
ing into account all the colonies of European and 
American states and other peoples who have come 
into sight, it may be said, using abundant caution, 
that the progressive peoples number 800,000,000 as 
against less than 175,000,000 one hundred years ago. 
2. Amplification of religious organizations, es- 
tablished early in the century, and other societies 
for Christian work, founded at a later date. An 
accurate writer informs us (Eev. Judson Smith, 
D. D.) "that at the opening of the nineteenth 
century, the different versions of the Scriptures 
numbered only about fifty, spoken by less than 
one-eighth of the race. There are now 421 differ- 
ent languages or dialects into which the Bible as a 
whole or in part has been translated. These in- 
clude the languages spoken by at least three-fourths 
of the human race. This marvelous work of 
translation is almost entirely due to missionaries, 
and constitutes in itself a grand achievement. All 
these languages have been studied and mastered by 
foreigners after long, continuous and exacting toil. 
There is no other single piece of literary work that 
can compare with it. Think of the time and pains 
that are necessary to obtain such an understanding 
of Chinese, Japanese, Tamil, Hindustani, Turkish, 
and the hundreds of other tongues, so as to be able 
to speak and write freely therein ; and to be able to 
reduce the language of barbarous peoples to written 
and lexical forms, to make the grammar and vo- 



42 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

cabulary of the language before the work of trans- 
lation can be commenced. Who can measure the 
time and effort required for such a task ? In what 
other field of labor has anything like this been 
attempted ? It has been done. Consider the fact 
that the great Bible societies have published the 
Scriptures in these manifold tongues and sent them 
forth to the ends of the earth at a price not above 
cost, and who can doubt that God is on the scene of 
human life, and that he has made good the ancient 
saying, " He has magnified his word above all his 
name." 

Protestant foreign missionary boards have in- 
creased from a few weak societies before 1801, to 
seventy strong boards, besides numerous subsidiary 
organizations. Numerous woman's foreign mis- 
sionary boards have been organized, especially 
in the United States, the first in 1861, and all but 
one since 1868. The Sunday-school, organized in a 
peculiar manner and for a special purpose, just at 
the close of the eighteenth century, has grown to a 
mighty force, beyond all expectation, for the re- 
ligious care of children. Young Men's Christian 
Associations, Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tions, The Christian Endeavor Society, medical 
missions on a large scale, have been founded and 
have rendered the most efficient service. 

It is not too much to say, that the Church is 
organized fitly for the conquest of the world for 
Christ. Power must come down from on high to 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 43 

quicken the various corps of the Christian army, 
before the world-wide conquest can be achieved. 
But the Church is no longer theorizing and praying 
and hoping, it no longer presents the spectacle 
of detached individuals zealous, alert, devoted, 
but powerless. The strength of organization is 
with us. 

Large additional numbers of workers will be de- 
manded, as the field of missions widens, and sol- 
diers here and there fall at their post, but the army 
is in the field, organized, equipped, drilled, and 
under command, and the word has been given, 
" Enter in, abide, and possess the land for Christ." 
The battle is on. We will not take off the har- 
ness before the victory has been won, but there is 
no retreat now, — no rest, no harking back for the 
men of vision. Checks there will be. We have 
met with one recently in which more than four 
hundred Christian missionaries won the martyr's 
crown, and by their side most gloriously, there 
stood and fell, a great company of true disciples of 
our God, but recently called from the ranks of a 
degraded paganism, as we are told by the press. 
But this will but swell the streams of salvation to a 
mighty flood, as when the temporary dam but 
gathers the waters of a river into a resistless head, 
ready when the hour strikes to sweep all before 
them. The Christian people are in one large sense 
a prepared people now, and there is waiting for 
them a prepared field, called of God, " the world," 



44 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

and that field, we believe, is a field of final, if not 
speedy victory. 

3. The human race, as such, is for the first time, 
face to face. The world has been fully explored. 
There remains, probably, no undiscovered territory 
of any significance. It is a thrilling sight, an awe- 
inspiring picture. Men, as such, all men gazing 
steadfastly into each other's faces : " Many strange, 
uncouth, savage men, shrinking back and crying to 
the newcomers, * Who are you ? ' ' From whence 
do you come ? ' ' What is your message ? ' ' We 
have heard the tramp of many feet. We have 
heard the sound as of thunder. We have seen the 
glare of the lightning, and our braves dropped to 
the earth, dead men.' " And the disciples of Christ 
are answering, in the midst of all the confusion of 
unhappy wars : We are your brothers. We have 
found you at last, For God "hath made of one 
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face 
of the earth, and hath determined the times before 
appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that 
they should seek the Lord." Amazing spectacle: 
can we gaze, and live, and not do f 

It was known that this must be, and would be, 
before the gospel could triumph. A recent writer 
calls attention to a prediction made by Sir Isaac 
Newton. In the commentaries which Sir Isaac has 
written on the prophecies of Isaiah, and on the 
Apocalypse, he has occasion to speak of the rapidity 
with which events must be brought to pass in order 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 45 

to prepare the way for the universal spread of the 
gospel at the time predicted, and he avows his 
belief that men will discover the means of passing 
from place to place with unwonted speed, perhaps 
at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Yoltaire in his 
self-conceit and hostility to religion scoffed at the 
suggestion not only as a contradiction to the prin- 
ciples of sober sense and sound philosophy, but as a 
proof of the bewildering and entangling influence 
of Christianity on the mind of a great man. He 
does not question the services which Newton has 
rendered to the cause of philosophy, while devoting 
his mind to scientific subjects. But he professes 
deep regret to see the enlightened philosopher ren- 
dered a poor dotard by employing his mind in the 
study of the Scriptures. Great and gifted men 
both of these. The one a seer, the other a blind 
man. The fifty miles an hour have been reached, 
and more, much more, and men, as men, are face to 
face. 

4. Increase of the Church during the century. 
It has been determined by experts that in the 
year 1801, the Christian Church at large numbered 
200,000,000. At the close of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the number of Christians had grown to 500,- 
000,000. A gain of 300,000,000 in a single cen- 
tury. This is a remarkable growth especially 
when compared with the rate of advance in all the 
previous centuries. In fifteen hundred years 
Christianity gained 100,000,000. In three hundred 



46 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

years, from a. d. 1500, to a. d. 1800, it gained 
100,000,000 more. In 100 years the era of the 
nineteenth century, Christianity gained nearly 
300,000,000, more than as much, as the statistician 
reminds us, as in the eighteen centuries previous to 
A. D. 1801. We cannot detain this audience around 
statistics, but the faint-hearted should be encour- 
aged by the facts. The Church as a whole is gain- 
ing on the world. At the rate of advance estab- 
lished in the nineteenth century, the Church will 
soon obtain the recognized oversight of the entire 
population of the earth. 

5. Human slavery has been abolished by all the 
enlightened nations. 

6. Education has been enlarged, systematized, 
and opened to the masses. 

7. Abundant wealth for the world's business and 
comfort, and for the work of the Church, has been 
amassed, and is being freely used. 

8. Larger freedom for mankind, in the territory 
of advanced humanity has been achieved notwith- 
standing notable exceptions to the contrary. 

The price which we have paid for the marvelous 
scientific advance of the century. We see it in the 
tendency toward materialism. The skeptical spirit 
is abroad. Great self-sufficiency is manifested in 
some circles amounting to a sort of boyish claim of 
independency of God, and indifference to an on- 
coming eternity. The demand is made for the abso- 
lute authority of fact in the domain of material 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 47 

science, and equally absolute freedom from fact in 
the domain of spiritual knowledge, though sup- 
ported by evidential values that cannot be ques- 
tioned. This state of mind, toward religion in 
general, and specially toward the large postulates 
of the Christian religion, is regarded with dismay 
by some timid Christians. It is rather a matter of 
delight, with others, who are a little weary with 
the gravities of Christian doctrine, and who would 
like a season of untrammeled roaming amid the 
uncertainties of speculative thinking. With the 
watchful and grave leaders of thought, however, 
the understanding is definite. The skeptical atti- 
tude in many circles, is just the price this genera- 
tion must needs pay for the advance in scientific 
knowledge which the nineteenth century — last half 
— has made in the world's great interests, but with 
drawbacks. Let us not be afraid, not even impa- 
tient, certainly not despondent, in view of the un- 
faith and worldliness of the closing days of a great, 
very great century. Man cannot interpret nature 
without God, and he cannot be delivered without 
the Christ : for " He is before all things, and by 
him all things consist." " Beware then, lest any 
man spoil you, through philosophy and vain deceit, 
after the elements of the world, and not after 
Christ." 

Christianity must nevertheless honor true science. 
She must bring it to work in her cause, and she 
must strive with all love and patience to save the 



48 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

scientists who have been raised up of God to break 
the way for the triumphs of the Cross. " The cen- 
tury closed with many a voice crying into the ears 
of men. It has been called a vociferous, multitudinous 
generation, with which we have had to do as we 
watched the last hours of a dying century." " Posi- 
tivist, idealist, utilitarianist, theosophist, spiritist, 
monist, naturalist, mediaeval reactionist, general 
skeptic — all telling the world what dogmas of 
Christianity we have rejected, and why f Self suffi- 
cient patronizers of the Gallilsean are informing a 
long-suffering Church and overwearied public, what 
religious beliefs we still hold, and Why ? " All 
these are here, coming and going : and yet above 
them all, high and commanding, the clear, ringing 
voice of divine revelation is heard, calling men 
back to God through an all-sufficient Mediator once 
crucified, but now reigning on the throne of power 
and of grace. 

At the close of the nineteenth century, even as at 
the beginning of the twentieth century, men want 
freedom to think for themselves. Freedom from 
whose sway? JSTot, we trust, from the great 
supreme rationality, whom to think, to love, to 
trust, and to serve, is the largest possible freedom 
for the highest rational finite being. Professor Har- 
nack has raised the question of our age and of all ages : 
How can a man be intellectually free, and yet a 
man in Christ Jesus ? And he has been reminded 
that that question was solved, for all time, at the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 49 

conference in Jerusalem, and no better solution, 
yea no other, can ever be offered. 

And now, fathers and brethren, we must close 
this hasty and in every way imperfect review of 
what we may call a pivotal century. Other speak- 
ers will bring forward, with larger detail and 
greater accuracy, individual particulars of this great 
period of time. And others yet will guide your 
thought into the fateful days that await us, as the 
century begins its august movement. 

There is a final word, sad to some, not so to us, 
who are risen with Christ and who seek things 
which are above where Christ sitteth on the right 
hand of God. The stalwart men, the great men 
chosen of God to open the nineteenth century, are 
not here. No increase of knowledge, no multipli- 
cation of wealth, no mandatory control of the forces 
of nature, no medical discoveries, no surgical skill, 
no speculative theory as to the unreality of body, sin 
and pain, no plaintive call of living friends, crying, 
" Abide with us, the world of man is just beginning 
to live," could hold them here. They are silent, 
they have disappeared, they are dead. So it will be 
said of every one of us, when the twenty-first 
century is ushered in. Our life here is but a tale 
that is told, but as a watch in the night. May our 
inward life, our relations, one with another, our 
discussions, our preaching, our individual and organ- 
ized testimony, our service of God and men, be un- 
dertaken and accomplished in the light of the 
4 



50 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

solemn fact. We are passing on to the final award, 
and none may detain us. 

" This is not my place of resting, 
Mine's a city yet to come. 
Onward to it I am hasting, 
On to my eternal home." 



THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT 
OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IN THE U. S. A. 



BY THE 

Rev. HENRY CHRISTOPHER McCOOK, D, D., Sc. D. 



THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF 

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN 

THE U. S. A. 



BY THE 

Rev. HENRY CHRISTOPHER McCOOK, D. D., Sc. D. 



The history of a river does not begin at the point 
on the plain where it has reached the proportions 
of a stream. It begins at the fountain head. The 
chief characteristic elements of the nineteenth cen- 
tury were born in the last decades of the eighteenth 
century. The eighteenth century was a child of 
the seventeenth, and as far as specific American 
Church history is concerned, we there mark its 
fountain head. 

I 

New England as a Mother of Presby- 
terianism 

Presbyterianism came to America in the wake of 
the Mayflower. The Presbyterianism of Eliza- 
bethan days, of which Thomas Cartwright was the 

53 



54 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

incomparable advocate, and of the reign of the 
Stuart kings, of which the Westminster divines 
were the exponent, was successfully lodged in 
America on New England soil. The experiment of 
Admiral Coligni, thirty years before the landing on 
Plymouth Eock, to colonize Florida with the 
Huguenot type of French Presbyterianism, was 
extinguished in blood by Spain ; but the zone of 
New England was happily beyond the reach of the 
Castilian. The Westminster Confession and Cate- 
chisms were lodged in the colonies neither by the 
Scotch of Caledonia nor the Scotch of Ulster, but 
by the English Puritans. Cotton, Davenport, and 
Hooker, were nominated to the Westminster Assem- 
bly, and would have gone but for local considera- 
tions. Eliot, the proto-missioner to the Indians, 
represented thousands who emigrated to New Eng- 
land or were banished by Oliver Cromwell and 
Charles II. It may be assumed safely that of the 
twenty thousand or more settlers in New England 
during the first fifty years of occupancy, from one- 
quarter to one-fifth were Presbyterians of the West- 
minster Assembly type. 

They were at length merged in the general mass 
of Congregationalists, which in the end swallowed 
up even the Scotch exiles and the Scotch-Irish set- 
tlers, from whom sprung such heroes as Generals 
Stark and Sullivan. Only here and there a sturdy 
remnant survived, like the old Newburyport Church 
wherein the evangelist Whitefield lies entombed. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 55 

The growing New England theocracy quenched 
the Presbyterian order. But the process developed 
(Jan. 6th, 1657) perhaps the first of the now long 
list of American benevolent organizations, known 
as " The Scotch Charitable Society of Boston." 

Yet the leaven did not lose its activity. The 
theory of the Westminster Puritans survived, and 
even found organic expression in a modified species 
of Presbyterianism which, in certain sections, was 
scarcely distinguishable from our present type. In 
Connecticut, within the memory of those now liv- 
ing, " Congregation alist " and " Presbyterian " were 
interchangeable words, and the distinction between 
" consociation" and "presbytery " was one of terms 
rather than of character. Here and there were 
sporadic settlements of pure Presbyterian congre- 
gations, as for example, that of Eichard Denton 
made at "Watertown in 1630, and at Hempstead, 
Long Island, in 1644. 

But the evolutionary development of the old 
English Puritan-Presbyterianism was wrought out 
by a change of environment. New England lies 
next door to the Empire State ; and when the avail- 
able farms of Connecticut, New Hampshire and 
Vermont were taken up, the stream of population, 
following its natural parallel and the line of least 
resistance, turned westward into New York. There 
it met organized Presbyterianism, and was greeted 
with a hospitality which was more than friendly ; 
it was fraternal. As in 1643 the Scottish commis- 



56 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

sioners fraternized in the Jerusalem chamber with 
the English Puritans, as men of kindred doctrine 
and order, so, in the beautiful valleys and uplands 
of Northern New York, the men of New England, 
of New Jersey, and of Pennsylvania and the South, 
recognized kindred spirits, and with high devotion 
to the essential truths of their faith, united in wor- 
ship and work. This spirit culminated in the 
"Plan of Union" of 1799 and 1802, whereby Con- 
gregationalists and Presbyterians united in common 
congregations and in common courts of jurisdiction. 
Dr. John Eodgers of New York was the author of 
the plan, and Dr. Ashbel Green in the General As- 
sembly of 1790 proposed the convention of the two 
communions. 

The dawn of the nineteenth century was, in that 
Johannean benignity and fraternization, in closer 
sympathy with the dawn of the twentieth century, 
than with the fathers of fifty years ago, when the 
Union was ruptured into the Old and New School 
branches, in the Kanstead Court Tabernacle of 
Philadelphia. During the opening decades of the 
century the union was a girdle of strength to Pres- 
byterianism. It won for it, by natural affinity, the 
splendid synods of Northern and Eastern New York, 
which have fed the national metropolis and its teem- 
ing centers of population with virile and generous 
blood, and with vigorous and cultured brain, that 
have enriched the Church and the nation. When 
the century began, according to the reports of 1801, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 57 

there were in that section twenty-six ministers, 
forty-two churches and about 2,300 communicants. 
To-day Presbyterianism holds the strongest posi- 
tions therein with a masterful hand, and numbers 
891 ministers, 744 churches and 135,065 communi- 
cants. 

This is not all. Still westward held " the course 
of empire." Along the old Indian trails, and over 
the route by which passed the Jesuit missionaries 
and the Canadian fur traders, and the French bat- 
talions in their struggle with the British for the 
new continent, by lake and bridle path, and down 
the valley of the Allegheny moved the New Eng- 
land Puritans and the New York Plan-of-Union 
Presbyterians. 

The stream divided. Part of it took the middle 
trail along which the Ulster migration moved, and 
lodged at Marietta, thus planting in Southern Ohio 
an element that left decided traces upon Presby- 
terian history. But the chief current was directed 
toward the " Western Keserve," the northeast cor- 
ner of the Ohio territory, the title to whose soil 
had been reserved by the State of Connecticut when 
she surrendered her claims to eminent domain under 
her colonial charter. 1 

1 Connecticut's charter gave her claim to the zone lying between 
the forty-first and forty-second parallels westward. Of this 3,800,- 
000 acres were reserved. Virginia in like manner reserved nearly 
four and a quarter million acres between the Scioto and the Little 
Miami Rivers ( about one-sixth of the State ) to satisfy the claims of 
her continental soldiers. 



58 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Thither rolled the white-topped wagons of the 
migrating children of the Puritans. They brought 
with them the Church and the school. Presby- 
terianism was rooted in the new soil. Along the 
pebbled beach of Lake Erie, in Cleveland, the 
" Forest Tree City," now the metropolis of that 
section, and in the counties tributary thereto, a 
lodgment was made for our Church and our ecclesi- 
astical principles, which has been a seeding center 
of influence for Ohio and the whole Middle-west, 
Southwest and Northwest. 

In the first decade of the century the number of 
Presbyterian communicants in that center was but 
a handful. To-day there is an enrollment in that 
corner of Ohio alone, of 198 ministers, 174 churches, 
and 30,465 communicants. 

These settlements pushed down from the West- 
ern Eeserve to the line of Columbiana and Stark 
counties, where the settlements met the confluent 
streams of the Scotch-Irish and German Eeformed 
migration, with whom Presbytery was the dominant 
form. To-day, chiefly owing to the assimilation of 
Presbyterianism by the Puritan stock of Northern 
New York, the Presbyterian Church has in the 
Buckeye State, the home land of Grant and Sher- 
man, Sheridan and McPherson, of Garfield and 
Harrison and McKinley, — seventeen Presbyteries, 
633 ministers, 64:6 churches, nearly 100,000 com- 
municants, and 90,000 Sunday-school scholars. In 
institutions of learning of high and lower grade 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 59 

for men and women, and youth ; in noble charities 
and in all the elements and accessories of advanced 
Christian civilization, in deep-seated and far-reach- 
ing influence for the general welfare of the Middle- 
west, Northwest and Southwest, who can weigh the 
value of that planting of Presbyterianism in the 
eastern border of Ohio ? What a vast stride for- 
ward from that day of small things when the com- 
mittee of Domestic Missions in Philadelphia sent 
out in 1805, James Hoge of Virginia, as a missionary 
to " the State of Ohio and the Natchez district " ; 
and in the next year (1806) renewed the commission 
to " the State of Ohio and the adjacent parts " ! 
* We have followed the chief contributory streams 
of New England Puritanism as it fed, directed, and 
modified, the course of Presbyterian history and 
influence. But there were many divergent and 
independent streamlets, which are more difficult to 
trace, but which in the aggregate made important 
accessions to the Church in membership and espe- 
cially in the ministry. The great colleges of New 
England, particularly Yale, supplied many of the 
early ministers to the scattered Presbyterian con- 
gregations of the Middle and Southern States. New 
England gave Jedediah Andrews, the first pastor of 
the mother church of Philadelphia, and a command 
ing figure in the organization, about 1705, of " The 
Presbytery," as the name always appears on the 
early records, meaning the General Presbytery, and 
the only court properly so designated. 



60 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The influence of New England Puritans was 
marked in the development of Princeton Uni- 
versity, which has so strongly modified the char- 
acter of our Church, for Princeton has always been 
cosmopolitan. It went to New England for 
Jonathan Edwards; to Virginia for the eloquent 
Davies; to Scotland for the incomparable John 
Witherspoon, and for James McCosh, whose colossal 
intellect was coupled with a child's charming sim- 
plicity ; and it went to the British West Indies for 
its last, and not least distinguished president. 

Time would fail to call the roll of the good and 
great New England men, whose life work has been 
wrought into the spiritual and mental and material 
growth of our Church and its affiliated branches. 
New England gave those devout missionaries to the 
Indians, David and John Brainerd ; and the story 
of David's life written by Jonathan Edwards was a 
clarion call to many consecrated evangelists. There 
was Gardiner Spring, a veritable metropolitan bishop, 
the successor of John Rodgers, and the predecessor 
of such preachers as James O. Murray, the younger 
Van Dyke, and Maltbie Babcock. Adams, the 
stately and courteous, a noble type of the old 
school gentleman, and of the new school divine ; 
Professor Shedd, a thinker clear as crystal and as 
solid ; Smith, keen, incisive and eloquent ; Lyman 
Beecher, " the noblest Roman " of all that name ; 
and Henry Ward, whose bright early manhood was 
given to our Church; Beeman, Wells, Finney, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 61 

Hatfield — we might point to constellation upon 
constellation of shining clerical lights of New 
England birth and parentage. Morse, who taught 
the lightning to talk ; Cyrus Field, who bridged 
the ocean and bound Europe to America, and 
linked the continents together ; Henry Field, editor, 
author, traveler, whose facile pen has charmed 
thousands of readers ; Samuel J. Mills, the father 
of American Foreign Missions, who fell asleep 
ashipboard while returning from his evangelistic 
visit to Liberia, and awaits the hour when the sea 
shall give up its dead ; Jedediah Chapman, moder- 
ator of the Synod of New York and New Jersey in 
1797, and first moderator of the Synod of Albany 
in 1803 ; Seth Willis ton and Jedediah Bushnell, a 
rare trio of missionary evangelists who set North- 
eastern New York aflame in the revival of 1799, — 
these were all New England men. 

Samuel Parker, who heard the strange and 
romantic call of the " Wise men of the West," and, 
though past the imaginary "dead-line of fifty," 
penetrated the wilds of Oregon to preach to the 
Indians, was a New England man. So was Marcus 
Whitman, who saved to the United States Oregon 
and the Northwest, from the clutch of the British 
Hudson Bay Company, and whose sound claims to 
the honor cannot be shaken by literary criticism. 
Kent, Little, Eiggs, the Pond brothers, and Dr. 
Williamson, the pioneer of Minnesota, — these and 
many more of the heroes and heroines of the great 



62 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

missionary campaign, which marked the early dec- 
ade of the nineteenth century, were given to our 
Church by New England. 

And what shall we say of the laymen of New 
England lineage and blood ? Noble men, " princes 
of the Church," indeed ; munificent contributors to 
every worthy cause, and active helpers in every 
good work, the savor of their generous gifts and 
devoted lives breathes through the charitable, 
educational and missionary institutions of our 
Church, of the country, and of the world ! One 
hesitates to name a few where there are so many, 
but many of you will think of the names of Butler, 
Brown, Dodge, Day, Eollins, Tappan. If you seek 
a present example, behold in the honored chairman 
of this morning's commemorative service, a child 
of New England, whom every Presbyterian and 
every Philadelphian honors and loves, for what he 
is as well as for what he has done — John H. Con- 
verse. 

II 

The Scotoh-Irish Element in the Making 

OF THE ChUECH 

Turn now to another and parallel stream of 
migration that largely influenced the progress of 
our history. It might well be a theme for equal 
debate whether New England Puritans or the 
Scotch-Irish Puritans, have more largely molded 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 63 

the history of our Church as it greets the twentieth 
century. If we exclude from consideration our 
Southern sister and the Cumberland branch, the 
question is more doubtful. But descending from 
the northern range of settlements, from New York 
westward, to those that lie along the valleys of 
Pennsylvania and Ohio, the influence of the Ulster 
Scots was predominant. 

It was a wonderful development, during the 
middle of the eighteenth century, that sent ships of 
Britain loaded with families, churches and com- 
munities, from the ports of Northern Ireland to the 
colonies. The folly of the English rulers of the 
eighteenth century was the friendliest factor in the 
making of America and her Presbyterian Church. 
The migration following the potato famine in the 
middle decades of the nineteenth century was 
Celtic, and has made the Latin communion the 
foremost in numbers of the great American 
Churches. But the migration of the eighteenth 
century was Protestant and Presbyterian. Had it 
not been for the unhappy divisions, and the lack of 
central and controlling agencies, the Presbyterian 
Church to-day might equal in numbers that of her 
ancient antagonist. But as our fathers were wont to 
say, " Nothing happens — to a Presbyterian !" Doubt- 
less, one of our foreordained functions has been 
to feed other denominations with our spiritual 
power and wealth of vigor, intellect and money. 
Certainly, "the godly consideration of predesti- 



64 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

nation," to quote the language of the Episcopalian 
Articles of Eeligion, (Art. XYII), " is full of sweet, 
pleasant and unspeakable comfort," — at times ! 
JSTot long ago your Committee on Eevision held a 
sitting in our Capitol City, and were honored with 
a reception by President McKinley. 

" I understand," the President remarked to our 
stated clerk, " that you have met to revise the Con- 
fession of Faith ! " 

" We are met to consider the matter," was the 
diplomatic answer. 

"Well," said the President, "I hope, whatever 
you do, that you will not revise out of it the doc- 
trine of predestination ! " 

Is not that a rare example of the " survival of 
the fittest " ? There spoke, through the lips of our 
Methodist President, the long and goodly genera- 
tions of his Presbyterian ancestors. 

To-day our President waits in yon far land of 
flowers, whose fragrance breathes upon this as- 
sembly from the Moderator's chair, to learn the 
will of the heavenly Father concerning his beloved 
wife. As he sits in sorrow and anxiety at the bed- 
side of the good woman whom he led, in her fair, 
bright maidenhood, to the marriage altar in a 
Presbyterian Church of the Buckeye State, the 
heart of this nation beats in sympathy with him. 
Let this venerable court, this vast assembly unite 
in a moment of silent prayer that his heart's desire 
and beloved may be spared ! Or, should the pur- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 65 

pose of God be otherwise, may our chief magistrate 
have grace to bow before the divine decree, and 
say : " Thy will, not mine, be done ! It is the Lord ; 
let him do as seemeth him good ! " 1 

In the retrospect of the century, we as a Church 
may take consolation in the thought that, through 
our predestined calling to fertilize the Church 
catholic and mankind in general, every Protestant 
Communion in America is far richer in every 
element of disciplined service and spiritual success, 
because of the good blue blood of Presbyterianism 
that has been poured within their veins. And the 
destiny that has drained our arteries for the benefit 
of sister communions appears still to be operative ! 

When the distinguished Koman Catholic prelate, 
Archbishop Kyan, came to Philadelphia, receptions 
were tendered him, to which came citizens of all 
Christian Churches. Among others he was pre- 
sented to a gentleman now in high official position 
in the State, as " the descendant of a family [the 
Latta family], that for 175 years has had contin- 
uously a representative in the Presbyterian ministry 
of the United States and colonies." With that 
suavity which marks the Archbishop's manners, he 
took the gentleman's hand, and bowing, said : 

1 The writer, when he opened his manuscripts early in October 
(1901) to prepare them for the press, was startled as he re-read 
these words in the shadow of our nation's loss, and in the light of 
President McKinley's dying words : "It is God's way. His will 
be done ! " 
5 



66 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

" Sir, I am glad, since you are not of our Church, 
that you at least belong to a disciplined religion ! " 

What a ringing phrase that is — "a disciplined 
religion "/ It was a tribute of strength to strength. 
In many a hard fought field, in Ireland and else- 
where, Komanism and her representatives have 
learned to respect their stout antagonist of the Pres- 
byterian fold. It is a satisfaction for us to believe 
that if we have lost so much by transfusion of 
blood, other Churches have gained by accessions of 
that devotion to duty and divine truth which have 
made our fathers and our fold the types of "a 
disciplined religion." May the day be distant far 
when the Church that we love shall cease to be 
distinguished, by friend or by foe, as the represent- 
ative of a religion whose pure biblical doctrines, 
primitive order, and hereditary trend and tradi- 
tions, contribute to the making of strong and up- 
right characters, thoroughly disciplined in every 
good word and work ! Certainly, our Scotch-Irish 
forbears were possessed of a disciplined religion ! 

Philadelphia was the chief though by no means 
the only port of entrance for the Scotch-Irish im- 
migration, and thence westward and southward 
along Pennsylvania's valleys the human stream 
flowed. It broke through the barrier of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains, leaving in its course many lonely 
graves by wilderness trails, or in the rude church- 
yards of log cabin sanctuaries in the forest. The 
tide swirled for awhile around the forks of the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 67 

Ohio, leaving its settlements on the rich uplands 
and in the fat bottom lands, and then swept on 
into Kentucky and the southwest territory. At 
these points, especially in Western Pennsylvania, 
the new society grew into lusty youth, and 
gathered vigor for that great forward movement 
which marked the latter decades of the first half of 
the nineteenth century, and which we are yet to 
consider. 

Naturally, this Ulster migration was distributed 
along the Atlantic seaboard, as far south as Georgia 
and the Carolinas. There, also, colonies of High- 
land Scotch made lodgment; among them that 
Flora MacDonald, whose name is so romantically 
associated in history with the escape of the pre- 
tender, Prince Charles Edward. A picture of the 
so-called " Barbecue " Presbyterian Church, where 
Flora and her husband, Alan MacDonald, wor- 
shiped, has been preserved, and may be seen by 
the curious. The famous Revolutionary partisan, 
Sergeant MacDonald, was of that Highland clan, 
although most of his clansmen were royalists, the 
almost unique exception to the political status of 
Presbyterians during the Revolutionary period. 
This introduces a fact which we may pause a 
moment to emphasize, for the American Revolution 
had a vital influence upon the progressive develop- 
ment of the Presbyterian Church. 

General Francis Marion's men, rank and file, were 
largely drawn from the Scotch-Irish, and it was the 



68 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Williamsburg settlers of that stock who put Marion 
into leadership. It was from these Southern Pres- 
byterians that came the Mecklenburg Declaration, 
one of the earliest notes of Colonial independence, 
although the utterance was paralleled by the acts 
of their congeners in the back counties of Pennsyl- 
vania. The famous Rifle Brigade of General Daniel 
Morgan was drawn chiefly from the same stock ; 
and although Morgan was a Virginian, the bulk of 
his corps was enlisted from the sturdy settlers of 
the southern and central valleys of Pennsylvania, 
whose " Associators " and " Liberty-men," were dis- 
ciplined by conflict with the border savage, and 
used to the long rifled weapon which was then a 
new arm in warfare, and which Napoleon greatly 
admired. 

It was the same stock that fought and won the 
battle of King's Mountain, every regiment of the 
Colonial forces there engaged being commanded by 
a colonel who, according to tradition, was a Pres- 
byterian, most of them ruling elders. Of one of 
these battalions it is related that the men gathered 
around their chaplain before the conflict began, 
and with uncovered head, leaning upon their rifles, 
bowed before God in supplication. Their spiritual 
leader closed his prayer with the ringing sentence, 
" The sword of the Lord and of Gideon ! " As by 
one impulse, they raised their hands aloft, like the 
old Covenanters in the act of adjuration, and re- 
peated in chorus, as though it were a battle cry, the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 69 

chaplain's closing words : " The sword of the Lord 
and of Gideon ! " No wonder such men were in- 
vincible ! 

General Daniel Morgan died an elder in the 
Presbyterian Church. Is it to his discredit that be- 
fore the battle of Cowpens he climbed into a bushy 
tree, and, secluded from the eyes of his comrades, 
bowed in prayer to the God of battles for forgive- 
ness of sin and for victory over his foes ? It is 
needless to enumerate examples. In truth the chief 
burden of the Revolutionary struggle fell upon the 
descendants of New England Puritans, and of the 
Ulster Presbyterians, shared in less proportion but 
almost equal ardor by the Germans of Pennsylvania 
and the Hollanders of New York. No review of 
the progress of our Church can omit some reference 
to the struggle for Colonial independence. 

It was but another stage in our ecclesiastical evo- 
lution. It was the destiny which a higher power 
controlled. But it is not strange that the Ulster- 
men threw themselves heart and soul thereinto, and 
were among the first and most uncompromising 
supporters of independence. To them it was a 
strike for liberty, from not only civil but ecclesias- 
tical disabilities and annoyances that had driven 
them and their forbears from Ireland. It seems a 
far cry from Lord Cornbury and his oppressive as- 
sault upon liberty of worship, in the persons of 
Francis Mackemie and John Hampton in the Coun- 
cil House at Fort Anne, New York, in 1706, to the 



70 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

immortal deed of 1776 in Independence Hall, which 
John Witherspoon, Presbyterian clergyman, advo- 
cated, and Charles Thomson, Presbyterian elder, re- 
corded. But in fact the note ran all through the 
intervening years. You may still see the original 
document with the seal of the King's privy council, 
dated 1767, which sets forth the reason, in the in- 
terests of the English Established Church, why the 
First Presbyterian congregation of New York 
should be denied a charter ! 

Elsewhere Presbyterian worshipers were ham- 
pered or harried. Although there was much liberty 
in many parts, and absolute liberty in some, there 
was always the possibility that under English rule, 
the old odious conditions in Ireland might be ap- 
plied to the Colonies. Hence the passion for abso- 
lute liberty of conscience, and the wish and motive 
for separation. It was the promulgation of a new 
civil code for mankind, from the political Mount 
Sinai of the new world, Independence Hall, which 
declared the equality of individuals before the law, 
and the equal right of all men to life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness. The barons of England, in 
the days of King John, framed the Magna Charta 
of civil rights for the Anglo-Saxons of Britain. 
The political fathers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and of the Constitution, made the Maxima 
Charta, not only for the Colonies but for the human 
race. 

In that noble deed, and in its precedent and sub- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 11 

sequent incidents, your ecclesiastical fathers had a 
conspicuous share. Presbyterians are never called 
upon to explain or apologize for the part which 
their fathers took as individuals and as churchmen, 
in pulpit and pew, in the courts of the Church, and 
in foughten fields where destiny was settled by the 
arbitrament of war. In these days of patriotic so- 
cieties and celebrations, the honors assigned to 
Presbyterian clergymen may be somewhat dispro- 
portionate. But in those days, when hard knocks 
were to be given and received, and the high fate of 
the nation was to be wrought out, Presbyterians 
had no lack of such honors as were to be won by 
hardships, by sufferings, by wounds and death in 
camp and field. It is surprising how many " sons * 
and " daughters " of the American ^Revolution, and 
of kindred modern associations, when they hark 
backward for a patriotic pedigree, find their claim 
to honorable standing hinging upon the lusty deeds 
of some Scotch-Irish or other Presbyterian an- 
cestor ! 

We have here dwelt at length upon the chief 
racial elements that contributed to establish Ameri- 
can Presbyterianism, but we do not forget that the 
good blood of nations which represented other 
branches of the great ecclesiastical family of the 
Keformed, has been transfused into our veins. The 
Church of Holland, whose sturdy children planted 
their seats on Manhattan Island and along the 
Hudson, has always recognized our close kinship, 



72 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

and the ministers of the two Communions have 
freely passed from one to the other. That we have 
not suffered by the exchange appears from some of 
the historic names of the living and the dead upon 
our rolls : van Kensselaer, van Dyke, van Norden, 
Talmage, De Witt. 

The sons of the Palatinate, too, have found a 
place among us. The first emigrants of the Ger- 
man Keformed were fostered by our Colonial fa- 
thers of the eighteenth century until they could fend 
for themselves. The Classis of Amsterdam gave 
them ecclesiastical mothering and substantial aid. 
Thus our pioneer days send down to us a happy 
foretoken of that " Alliance of Reformed Churches 
holding the Presbyterian System," known under the 
popular name of " Pan-Presbyterian." Our rolls 
abound in German names, derived from the original 
Palatinate stock and from the late migration. 
Among them there is one name that has shone in 
the world of scholars with especial luster, Professor 
Philip Schaff. So, too, the Huguenots have left 
their impress upon our history, easily dropping into 
our ranks and bringing to us a glint of their vivac- 
ity, and a touch of that vigorous faith which 
marked their great leaders, — Calvin, Coligni, Farel. 

Nor must we forget among those early elements 
of strength the Calvinistic Church of Wales. 
Welshmen were among our first colonists, and have 
left their trail, particularly in the early Quaker 
settlements, in the names of many Pennsylvania 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES "IB 

towns and neighborhoods. "We can trace them 
upon our records by such names as Edwards, Evans, 
Lewis, Jones, Morris, and Eoberts. 

Ill 

The Pioneer Presbyters and their Flocks 

The conquest of independence changed the des- 
tiny of our Church and set it upon its wider sphere 
and world-wide career. There were only thirty- 
four men in the General Assembly of 1799, one- 
twentieth of the membership of this Twentieth 
Century Assembly. There were only fifty-six com- 
missioners, thirty-six ministers and twenty elders, 
in the Assembly of 1801. But the great step had 
been taken toward a large and unfettered growth. 
The barriers to national and ecclesiastical develop- 
ment and union had been burned away in the 
fervor of war, and all obstacles melted down be- 
fore the newborn enthusiasm for liberty, for exten- 
sion, for a continental domain. 

The losses of the Presbyterian Church during the 
Kevolution were great in members killed, wounded, 
and fallen by disease; in destroyed churches; in 
scattered congregations ; in impoverished individ- 
uals and families, and in the lapsed and indifferent, 
the inevitable consequence of a protracted war. 
The eighteenth century left our Church with a 
communion membership at the utmost numbering 
20,000, and it was probably one-quarter less than 



74 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

that figure. But it was blest with leaders who 
were possessed with a quenchless zeal for souls. 

National sovereignty cut loose the Colonies from 
dependence upon the mother country, and threw 
upon ministers and people the whole responsibility 
for evangelizing the land. Nobly they rose to the 
occasion. In all the new Eepublic, when the nine- 
teenth century dawned, there were in round num- 
bers 200 (183) ministers, and 500 (449) churches. 
They were widely separated from one another. 
Single bishoprics embraced a whole Presbytery and 
sometimes an entire state. Families dwelt in log 
cabins in " the forest primeval," amidst scant clear- 
ings whose open spaces and " blazed " trees showed 
where settlers had made homes. As the pioneer 
presbyters passed to and fro, they knew not when 
the lurking savage might break out of the solitude 
upon them; and their crude records abound in 
references to the ever-impending peril of the Indian 
raid. Their salaries were pitifully small, payable 
wholly or in part in " good merchantable wheat," 
and often unpaid or paid tardily. No "Lady 
Bountiful" was there to share parish cares; no 
princely men of affairs to bear the financial burden 
of new enterprises; no Boards with experienced, 
faithful and intelligent secretaries, the general 
pastors of the Church, to stimulate and support 
exertion. 

If you seek for the just records of home mis- 
sions, look over the minutes of the early synods and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 75 

presbytery. Every minister was a missionary. 
From college president down to the leathern 
breeched apostle of the far frontier, they were 
evangelists all ! "With the spirit of the preaching 
friars of the middle ages, or better comparison still, 
with the spirit of the apostles of the primitive age, 
they went from settlement to settlement, riding 
through the lone forest, camping at night in open 
woods, possessed with the consuming desire to 
found a Church, to administer the Sacraments, to 
gather and save the scattered sheep of the Ameri- 
can wilderness. 

They were in perils in the forest ; in perils by 
river ; in perils by slough and swamp ; in perils from 
savage beasts and more savage men ; in perils from 
their own countrymen, whose nefarious deeds they 
thwarted and whose iniquity they rebuked ; in 
perils from winter blizzard and summer heats; in 
perils by fevers, by malaria, from contagious dis- 
eases. Amidst all these and innumerable priva- 
tions, they pressed forward, bearing the standard 
of Jesus Christ and his gospel, planting humble 
organizations and rearing humble sanctuaries that 
to-day have grown into the great churches and 
beautiful temples in which twentieth century Pres- 
byterians "praise God, from whom all blessings 
flow." It is due to them, fathers and brethren, that 
to-day we may number our own great host, and 
cast our eyes over our vigorous offshoots of the 
Southern and Cumberland Churches, and in the 



76 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

spirit of the patriarch Jacob exclaim, " With my staff 
I crossed the border of the nineteenth century, and 
lo, I am become three bands ! " The fifteen thou- 
sand souls which our Church led, by the dawning 
light of the nineteenth century, into the wilderness 
reaches of the nation's vast and vacant territories, 
number now a million and a half in actual Church 
communion. 

No wonder those men found the most fitting 
emblem to put upon the seal of their newly-organ- 
ized General Assembly in the well-known device, 
printed on the title page of their loved Genevan 
Bibles, and upon the first English edition of Calvin's 
Institutes, — the brazen serpent uplifted upon the 
Cross ! The conception which the fathers and 
founders had of the high mission committed to 
them was, that they stood in the wilderness of the 
New World to uplift before perishing souls the one 
and only saving remedy for sin-ruined men. How 
faithfully they fulfilled their Heaven-appointed 
duty, let the reports and records of this day declare. 

And what rare heroes and heroines composed 
these few and scattered flocks of those missionary 
bishops ! Weary with hard conflict with the forest ; 
with domestic duties done under severest condi- 
tions ; with the necessity to fly the Indian foe, and 
with the wearying fret of continual guard against 
him; enervated by fevers and racked by chills 
those pioneers had before them the mightiest and 
loftiest problem that God gives to mortals. A so- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 77 

ciety was to be organized ; a Church to be estab- 
lished, a State to be founded ; schools and colleges 
were to be instituted ; social order and civilization 
were to be built up in the midst of a wilderness 
land. 

They found the wilderness a social chaos, " with- 
out form and void." The divine Spirit within 
them brooded over those forest deeps, those prairie 
reaches and mountain heights, and there came forth 
order and law and holy faith. They spoke, in the 
name of the great Jehovah and his divine Son, the 
old creative word, " Fiat lux ! " " Let there be 
light ! " And there was light. The people no 
longer sat in darkness. A new people occupied the 
primitive vacant seats, and because of those faith- 
ful pioneers, the wilderness blossoms as a rose- 
Sublime men! Heroic women! They undertook 
their Titanic task as unconscious of their own great- 
ness and the magnitude of their achievements, as 
those depicted by our Lord at the final judgment, 
who in the true spirit of heroic humility questioned 
the divine Judge as to when they had wrought the 
worthy deeds on which approval was pronounced ? 
They were plain men, rudely-clad, uncouth in their 
manners at times, yet many of them with the old- 
fashioned graces of gentlemen and ladies. Their 
herculean labor was heroically done, and the ver- 
dict of history is that, which, we dare believe, al- 
ready has been spoken in the High Court of God : 
" Well done, good and faithful servants ! " 



78 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The environment of the American Church has 
greatly influenced its progressive development. 
Our fathers had a vast and virgin field on which to 
train men and women, without the trammels of Old 
World customs and traditions, into the new ideas 
of independence, liberty, manhood, freedom of con- 
science, and obligations to serve the race. Room 
gives opportunity. Nothing in nature needs as 
much room as a man. Nothing is capable of as 
large expansion as a man. In these two correlated 
facts lie the secret of his greatness and destiny. 
No pent-up sphere can hold him when he feels the 
touch of the divine Hand, and the impulse of the 
Holy Spirit moving him to his destiny. 

A young cedar of Lebanon, and a seedling 
sequoia of the Yosemite occupy much space, and 
they need room for complete growth. But they 
stay where nature has rooted them. Man not only 
grows on, but goes on. Even when he holds to his 
selected seats he expands upon them. His hut be- 
comes a house ; his house a mansion ; his mansion 
a palace. His work bench develops into a shop; 
the shop into a factory; into a warehouse; into 
stores. His canvas tabernacle, or log sanctuary, or 
sod-house temple becomes a sanctuary of hewn 
logs, of boards, of brick, and stands at last a cathe- 
dral of stone. 

There was nothing haphazard in the providence 
that set the Anglo-Saxon upon this continental 
sphere for his development. America was destined 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 79 

for, as it was given to, a virile race. Spain, seized 
with an infatuation, fed from the Vatican and from 
ten thousand pulpits and confessionals, to quench 
Protestantism, was expending all her energies in a 
struggle against Holland and in efforts to destroy 
Protestantism in Europe. Thus, her attention was 
diverted from North America, and another race and 
another faith occupied this noble domain. "We owe 
a larger debt to that little land of the Netherlands 
than men are apt to estimate. Holland, by her 
heroic opposition to Spain, her long-continued 
struggle for national and religious liberty, held back 
the power that might have blighted this broad and 
beautiful land and stayed the migratory waves 
upon which our fathers entered and occupied the 
land. 



IV 

Classical and Theological Schools 

Do you ask whence came the pastors and preach- 
ers for these pioneer flocks ? Our fathers were not 
unmindful of the need of ministers and the duty to 
provide a ministry native to the soil. The pioneers 
did not find a short and easy road to the ministry. 
Most of them were educated men, and graduates of 
colleges. All of them had an academic education ; 
and every minister of influence in all the centers of 
population was a theological seminary, around 
whom, as in the case of John McMillan of "Wash- 



80 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

ington County, Pennsylvania, gathered a group of 
students. 

History has delighted to depict our great mar- 
tyred President, Abraham Lincoln, preparing for the 
responsible duties to be devolved upon him in the 
future by studying the rudiments of English by the 
light of a cabin fire. This was a common history 
in the pioneer days. John Watson, the first presi- 
dent of Jefferson College under its charter, began 
his career as a clerk and barkeeper. An old copy 
of Horace came into his hands, which without a 
grammar, and with only a Latin dictionary to guide 
him, he studied by the light of a wood fire, shin- 
ing from an old-fashioned hearth. He mastered 
Horace in that wise, and at last achieved the hon- 
orable position in which he died, one of the fore- 
most scholars of the West. 

We catch a glimpse of Charles Beatty, the Irish 
pack-peddler, at the door of the old Tennent Log 
College of Neshaminy, astounding the master and 
his scholars by offering his wares in fair Latin. 
The incident settled his destiny, for Mr. Tennent 
received him into the school, and he became an effi- 
cient minister. With George Duffield, he was the 
first to visit as a missionary the forests of Ohio, to 
preach the gospel to the red man. 

We see Macurdy, the wagoner of Ligonier, earn- 
ing by " teaming," the simple method of transporta- 
tion of those early days, the money which laid the 
foundations of his useful career. We see Samuel 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 81 

Porter, the weaver, rising from the loom to the 
pulpit. 

For that matter, the race of self-made ministers 
has not died out. There is Dr. Yeomans, who cher- 
ished his blacksmith hammer as the best emblem of 
his early manhood. William P. Breed, sweet, gra- 
cious, pious, witty, a poet, a naturalist, and a 
preacher, we see closing his days by amusing him- 
self at the trade he learned when he was a book- 
binder's boy in New York city. In Central New 
York, a lad possessed with the quenchless zeal for 
learning which has characterized the stock from 
which he sprung, presented himself in an academic 
town to win his education. He entered the family 
and the employ of a physician ; he attended to the 
chores of the house; he cared for the doctor's 
horses. He won the crown of education for which 
he struggled. "Would you be surprised to learn that 
that youth became the pastor of one of the noblest 
churches in the land " the mother First " of Phila- 
delphia, a past-president of the Board of Education, 
a professor in a great theological seminary, and the 
present president of the Board of Aid for colleges, 
a commissioner upon the floor of this Assembly, — 
Dr. Herrick Johnson ! These are but typical cases. 
The guiding genius of the American people may be 
traced in the genesis of her churches ; her worthiest 
leaders, her best, her noblest sons have trod the 
pathway of humble toil to the highest seats. 

The service wrought in raising up an educated 

6 



82 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

ministry by the early academies and colleges and 
their successors, is beyond estimate. There is no 
better work before the Church than to rebuild these 
old foundations, and erect new ones where they are 
needed. The tendency of our great universities, 
unless fed by a devout constituency and restrained 
by devout and faithful managers, is to cast off the 
influence of the Church and repel or keep to a dis- 
tance the touch of religion. At the best they are 
apt to be coldly responsive to the influences that 
make for piety and evangelical faith. But the 
academies and small colleges are accessible to, and 
their students easily molded by, the influence of re- 
ligion. Let us care for them ! Let us hark back to 
the old methods while we " consider the days of 
old." It is a good token that we are so doing. 
" The wheel has come full circle round," and the 
academies and small colleges of the pioneer days 
are once more taking their place as the " semina- 
ries " — the seeding centers of pious education. 

The method of ministerial instruction has been 
revolutionized during the nineteenth century. 
Most of our early academies and colleges had their 
origin in the necessity to prepare an educated 
ministry for the old colonies and the new states. 
The classical teacher, who was with rare exceptions 
a clergyman, was also the teacher of theology. In 
course of time a theological professor was added. 
He included in himself all the functions discharged 
by the entire faculty of a modern seminary. The 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 83 

work of the professor of theology was frequently 
supplemented by or was the supplement of private 
instruction. Men who have not yet reached three- 
score and ten, can remember that divines of ap- 
proved soundness in theology were resorted to by 
young men whose thoughts were upon the sacred 
ministry, and who studied privately in their houses. 
This was the rule also in the professions of law and 
medicine. 

It was not until the third year of the century 
that the theological seminary was evolved, "An- 
dover " having been established in 1803. " Eutgers " 
of the Dutch Eeformed Church followed in 1810 ; 
and in our own Church " Princeton Seminary," the 
original theological college, was not founded until 
the beginning of the second decade of the century, 
1812. In the meanwhile, Dr. John McMillan was 
the center of a theological school annexed to Jeffer- 
son College (now Washington-Jefferson) in Can- 
onsburg, "Western Pennsylvania, out of which in 
the course of time was developed the Western 
Theological Seminary at Allegheny. 

The old methods have ceased, and from the 
Golden Gate to the Atlantic, there are established 
at convenient centers, authorized "schools of the 
prophets," manned by professors of piety, learning, 
and modern culture. Some of these are richly en- 
dowed, by the munificence of Christ's faithful and 
worthy stewards in the Church ; but others struggle 
on under great burdens, in the face of difficulties, 



84 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

toward the " door of hope " which may open to 
them a sufficient maintenance. 

There are few of us who would go back to the 
methods of our fathers. Yet, theological seminaries 
have not been unqualified blessings to the Church, 
and they include an element of danger that needs 
to be vigilantly guarded. Ministers whose life 
separates them from the people and the practical 
duties of the pastorate, and whose thoughts are 
largely and often wholly given to critical studies 
and the pondering, analyzing, and framing of ab- 
struse doctrines and theories, are apt to acquire a 
temper and habit of mind which insensibly trend 
toward doubt. The checks and balances of the 
pastorate furnish an element of human sympathy 
and a view of human necessities which color and 
modify critical processes, and hold the heart true 
to holy faith. How many of the heresies that have 
distressed, disturbed, and weakened, the Christian 
Church have originated with theological professors ? 
Have not most of the attacks upon evangelical 
religion issued from theological seminaries in 
Europe and America ? The ablest defenders have 
also come from thence ; but history admonishes the 
Church that concerning even the seats of sacred 
learning she must regard the divine Master's com- 
mand, ■" Watch and Pray ! " 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 85 



The Great Awakening of 1800 

Two great waves of influence that moved across 
the border of the nineteenth century have deeply 
impressed, have indeed almost shaped, the character 
of our Church. One was the revival of religion some- 
times called "The Great Awakening of Eighteen 
Hundred." A formalism as spiritually barren as 
that of the Pharisees stood for religion. Specula- 
tions as sapless, soulless and useless as those which 
occupied the intellects of the Jewish priests and 
rabbins of the first half-century of Christ, were the 
favorite themes of ministers and teachers. Un- 
belief, indifference, skepticism ate like gangrene at 
the hearts of high and low. Montesquieu said of 
this period : " There is no religion in England. If 
the subject is mentioned in society, it excites noth- 
ing but laughter.'' Bishop Butler said : " It is 
taken for granted by many persons that Christianity 
is not so much as a subject for inquiry ; but that it 
is now at length discovered to be fictitious." So 
general was the reaction from old beliefs that 
Yoltaire is said to have boasted that before the 
nineteenth century dawned, Christianity would be 
banished from the world ! Par ton, in his life of 
Aaron Burr, says that at the close of the eighteenth 
century it was a common expectation among 



86 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

cultivated infidels that Christianity would not hold 
its place in the world for three centuries longer ! 

This spiritual condition of the Church was re- 
flected, though in a fainter degree, in America. 
The infidelity whose outbreak shocked the world 
during the French Eevolution of 1792, had long 
been gradually leavening the nation, nobility and 
clergy, professional, business and laboring classes 
alike. It infected the officers of the Colonial army 
by contact with their companions in arms of the 
army and the navy of France, who were fighting 
side by side with them the battles of independence. 
The godly mourned the desolation of Zion. 
" Ichabod, thy glory is departed " seemed to be 
written upon the portals of the sanctuaries. 

But it happened as of old in Israel, " the people 
who sat in darkness saw a great light." Upon the 
spiritual darkness of Israel in the first century, 
arose the Sun of Eighteousness, and with Him 
those lesser lights, the apostles and disciples of 
Jesus, and following them the early Christian 
fathers. The Eef ormation of the sixteenth century 
saved the faith in Europe. It gave men a form of 
Christianity adapted to the new conditions of so- 
ciety and the renaissance of human thought and 
culture. It revived the Eoman Church and rescued 
it from spiritual decadence. If the Eeformation was 
the birth of Protestantism, it was the rebirth of 
Eoman Catholicism. Thus on either hand Chris- 
tianity was purified and uplifted. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 87 

So, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, 
there came upon the whole Christian world a spirit 
of revived evangelism. The sense of responsibility 
for the spiritual saving of men, which had been 
almost atrophied, or buried beneath the exotic ef- 
florescence of formalism, was quickened in many 
breasts. On every hand was manifest a keen inter- 
est in human souls, whether at home or abroad, and 
a burning zeal to save them. The influence of this 
great movement is inestimable. It is scarcely too 
much to say that it saved Protestant Christianity 
from decadence. Perhaps, more properly one 
should say, it was the evidence that Christianity 
possesses a vitality which is indestructible, and 
which expresses itself in movements for the rescue 
of humanity and the revival of religion. 

This mighty spiritual tide swept across the border 
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, over- 
spreading England especially, and in a measure the 
whole of Protestant Europe. It swelled high on 
our American shores. The Presbyterian General 
Assembly was organized in 1789 under the day- 
spring of this new reformation, into warm zeal and 
holier faith, and so, under happy auspices began 
its great career of evangelism. The preachers 
kindled the flame of piety as they went from 
town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, from house 
to house. 

Along the Southern Atlantic border the reviving 
energy spread from the old Hanover Presbytery of 



88 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Virginia to the Carolinas and Georgia. The zeal and 
fervid eloquence that have characterized the preach- 
ers and orators of the South, were consecrated to 
the establishment of religion along the rivers and 
shores, on the plantations, and in the great pine 
forests, of that section. 

In the Eastern and New England States the 
spirit of revival worked mightily. Connecticut and 
Massachusetts felt the power. It penetrated the 
then wilderness of Vermont and New Hampshire. 
Eastern New York was profoundly moved thereby. 
Commencing with a wonderful display of divine 
grace at Palmyra, it extended to Bristol, Bloomfield, 
Canandaigua, Eichmond, and Lima. The counties of 
Delaware and Otsego were affected. On the north, 
Oneida was shaken. It was a common saying then, 
" There is no religion West of the Genesee ftiver." 
But the force of the proverb was dissolved before 
the advancing Spirit of grace. It rolled a strong 
current into "Western New York, and to the revival 
of that period is due, in a large degree, the devout 
and elevated character of the people of that popu- 
lous section, and the prosperity and culture which 
invariably spring therefrom. 

"From 1800 to 1825," said Dr. Gardiner Spring, 
of the Brick Church, New York city, who himself 
was a child of the revival, "there was an uninter- 
rupted series of celestial visitations. During the 
whole of these twenty-five years, there was not a 
month in which we could not point to some village, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 89 

some city, some seminary of learning, and say, 
' Behold, what God hath wrought ! ' " 

McMillan, McGready, Marquis, Patterson, Ma- 
curdy, and other pioneer preachers and educators on 
our frontiers, became the divine instruments of the 
Western Eevival of 1800. Then were to be seen in 
the vast wilderness reaches of our new land strange 
and startling scenes. Western Pennsylvania and 
Kentucky especially were moved to the foundations 
of society. There the revival seized upon and 
utilized an institution which had sprung out of the 
necessities of the pioneers. These men, mostly de- 
scendants of Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians, sought to maintain their old-fashioned an- 
nual communions with its " Four-Days' Meetings," 
including a Thursday fast and post-communion 
service on Monday. There was no sanctuary that 
could hold the people save " God's first temples," 
the mighty forests around them. There, then, they 
pitched their tents, and reared booths of wattled 
branches and leaves, and placing them and their 
covered wagons around three sides of a hollow 
square, which contained rude seats of logs and slabs, 
facing a pulpit and platform of the same material, 
they worshiped God as nearly as might be after 
the manner of their fathers. 

This primitive institution the pioneer revivalists 
utilized. Under a process of gradual evolution, 
chiefly in the hands of our brethren of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, it has grown into the Chau- 



90 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

tuaquas, the Ocean Groves, the Winonas, and similar 
vast summer encampments which to-day attract 
scores of thousands of worshipers. But it is of 
Presbyterian origin. Yast camp meetings were 
organized by the pioneer preachers. In the prime- 
val forest arose the mighty sound of psalms sung 
by great congregations, who were swayed by the 
fervent reasonings and appeals of the preachers as 
were the branches of the trees above them by the 
passing breeze. In the silence of the deeper woods, 
the cry of prayer and of penitence was heard, and 
the rejoicing shout of new believers. There were 
some disorders as one might expect. There were 
physical prostrations ; outbursts of unregulated en- 
thusiasm; unwholesome reactions; harmful ex- 
crescences. But, on the whole, the work of grace 
may be said to have saved the new West from the 
gross materialism, infidelity, and semi-barbarism, 
that threatened it, and consecrated it unto Christ 
and his Church. Thus, the infant brow of the 
mighty West and Southwest was baptized with the 
dew of heaven, the Holy Ghost shed from on high. 
The tide of religious feeling spread farther and 
wider, and rose higher and higher, and from that 
day to the present has been continually rising until 
the dawn of the twentieth century shows the 
Church panoplied with a power of influence, of 
wealth, and above all of spiritual purpose and devo- 
tion which, in the whole history of the nineteen 
centuries of Christianity has never been excelled. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 91 

Our General Assembly of 1803 appointed a spe- 
cial committee on the state of religion, consisting 
of Samuel Miller, Archibald Alexander and James 
"West, peerless names in our Presbyterian history. 
Their report is well worth perusal by the men of 
the twentieth century, and it confirms the state- 
ment here made of the inestimable value of the 
revival of 1800 in shaping the social, moral and re- 
ligious character of the American people. To one 
point this committee called particular attention- 
Most of the accounts of revival communicated to 
them stated that the institution of praying societies, 
or seasons of special prayer to God for the out- 
pouring of the Spirit, generally preceded the re- 
markable displays of divine grace with which the 
land had been favored. Could this venerable As- 
sembly and the Church which it represents, better 
begin the new century than by calling upon all 
Christian people throughout its vast extent to 
organize " New Century Praying Bands " and 
" Twentieth Century Societies for Prayer " ? Were 
we thus to lay hold of the divine Hand by that 
human arm divinely appointed to open its stores of 
mercy, surely we would have reason to hope that 
now, as a century ago, the Spirit of the Lord would 
descend upon the people, and multitudes be born unto 
God. Here, from our high vantage ground, on this 
the great day of our new century feast, let us pray 
and wait with outstretched hands to God, and listen 
for " the sound of a going in the tops of the trees " ! 



92 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

YI 

Development Theough the Spirit of 
Organization 

A second formative influence that shaped the 
character of our Church and of American Christen- 
dom generally, was the spirit of organization. Men 
were moved to band together for Christian work. 
The element of personal initiative in Church prog- 
ress was stronger with the pioneers than with us, 
in whom that element is largely eliminated. Boards 
and societies are now depended upon to begin and 
complete the great missionary undertakings of the 
Church. But the fathers early saw the need of 
organization. This movement had begun in Europe 
in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The 
Baptist Missionary Society was organized in 1792 ; 
the London Missionary Society in 1794; the Church 
Missionary Society in 1799; the Beligious and 
Tract Society in 1799 : and the Episcopal Church 
Missionary Society in 1800 ; the British and Foreign 
Bible Society in 1804. These were the types of 
many organizations which sprung into being 
throughout Great Britain and the Continent. 

In the American colonies Christians largely de- 
pended upon British organizations. It is significant 
that the society in Scotland for Propagating Chris- 
tian Knowledge, composed of Presbyterians in 
Edinburgh, was among the first to undertake mis- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 93 

sionary work in America. In 1730, Governor 
Belcher and others of the Massachusetts Bay 
Colony were made a " Board of Correspondents,'' 
for carrying on work among the Indians. In 1732 
the first missionaries l were sent out to the Indians 
on the George and Connecticut rivers. In 1737 this 
work was abandoned. 

In 1740 a similar Board was formed in New 
York ; and within the same decade, David Brainerd 
was sent out under the auspices of the same society 
to undertake his historic and heroic work in which 
he was succeeded by his brother, John Brainerd. 
The conversion of the Indians was then regarded as 
foreign missionary work, as indeed it was until a 
comparatively recent date. But the Scottish So- 
ciety undertook home missions as well, sending out 
the Kev. Mr. John McLeod to a colony of High- 
landers in the Carolinas in 1735. 2 

The Kevolution severed the bond between the 
colonies and the mother country, and American 
Christians at once began to organize for evangelis- 
tic work. The New York Missionary Society was 
formed in 1796, chiefly through the influence of the 
eloquent Dr. John M. Mason who, in his address of 
1803, indulged the dream that the "converted 

1 Mr. Joseph Secomb, Mr. Ebenezer Hinsdale and Mr. Stephen 
Parker. 

2 The mission was abandoned in 1740 on account of the colony 
being nearly extinguished in the expedition against the Spaniards 
at St. Augustine. 



94 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Indians of America might carry westward into 
Asia the light of life and immortality." "Who shall 
say that this dream is an empty figment? The 
native Indians to-day are preaching the gospel to 
their own people ; and it is but a step from the far 
West and from Alaska to the shores of Asia ! Why 
should not our brethren of the aboriginal race aid 
in evangelizing Japan and China, from which na- 
tions it is not impossible that they may have 
sprung ? 

In 1802 the Synod of Pittsburg was organized, 
and at once formed itself into the " Western Mis- 
sionary Society," of which the Hon, Walter 
Lowrie became the secretary. A " Board of Trust " 
was formed as a sort of commission to conduct the 
affairs of the society, and to select and send forth 
missionaries. In 1810 (June 29) the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was 
formed, and in 1818 the American Home Missionary 
Society. To both of these organizations Presby- 
terians largely contributed, and no just history of 
the progress of the Church can omit the vast in- 
fluence for good exercised upon Presbyterian his- 
tory, in building up our frontiers and planting mis- 
sions in foreign parts, by these two noble organiza- 
tions now controlled by our brethren of the Con- 
gregational Church. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 95 

VII 

Forms of Worship.— The Praise Service 

A great change has befallen our forms of wor- 
ship. One may use the word " forms " ; for al- 
though our branch of the widely-spread Presby- 
terian and Eeformed fold has no written prayers, 
the methods of Calvin and Knox not having de- 
scended to us, yet our fathers had their unwritten 
forms. As a rule they adhered to them more 
rigidly than the clergy of to-day. Those who can 
remember the old-time pastors, can recall their fixed 
order of worship, and the method and matter of 
their public petitions. Some of their phrases still 
ring in our ears ; quaint, devout, breathing the 
spirit of piety, and clothed in the words of Holy 
Scripture. Some of these have been made obsolete 
by the very progress of events, as the well-worn 
petition that " God would open the gates of the 
Gentiles to the gospel n ; and that " God would 
break down the Chinese wall for the entrance of 
Christianity." 

Organs and melodeons, as aids to praise, were to 
most of our pioneer worshipers an impious " kist 
o' whustles." Even the tuning fork was looked 
upon with suspicion. It would be hard for a 
modern congregation to conceive the depth of in- 
dignation and contempt expressed in the sarcastic 
announcement credited to one of the old-fashioned 



96 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

ministers who was preaching, by way of exchange, 
in a church where a musical instrument was used : 
" Let us fiddle and sing to the praise of the Lord in 
the use of the One Hundredth Psalm ! " The in- 
novation had a long and hard contest for admission 
which, to most of this assembly, is now merely a 
curious episode of history. 

There is little to restrain any pastor from in- 
troducing whatever form of musical service pleases 
him. Choirs, even voluntary choirs, were rare a 
hundred years ago. The precentor stood at the 
front or side of the pulpit, and raised the tune, 
frequently "lining out" the psalms, a custom 
which had not disappeared fifty or even forty years 
ago ; although your speaker has seen within the 
last twenty years a precentor in a dress coat, with 
baton in hand, standing on the pulpit platform of 
a metropolitan church, leading the congregational 
praise. Anthems, solos, responsive readings, would 
have raised a riot in the ordinary Presbyterian 
congregation of a century ago ; and the minister 
who would have dared to introduce them would 
have been served with almost as emphatic a protest 
as that of Jenny Geddes, whose famous stool ad- 
monished Dean Hannay, in St. Giles of Edinburgh 
in 1637, that he must not try to force " the relics of 
popery " upon a Presbyterian folk. 

How changed is all this ! The precentor has gone, 
or is only an occasional archaic survival. Organs, 
choirs, anthems, solos, responsive readings, are al- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 97 

most universal in church or in Sunday school. The 
ancient " Twelve Common Tunes " have given place 
to hundreds of melodies, ranging from the highest 
product of the masters to the lightest jiggling and 
trivial adaptations of the Sunday-school or revival- 
ists' tune book. 

And the Psalms — the dear old Psalms of David 
in the " varsion " of Francis Kous ! Where are 
they ? Time was, when one Psalm Book served for 
all churches and all sections. The emigrant from 
Scotland or from Ulster found his Kous in use in 
the American Colonies and States. The pioneer 
who pushed his slow way from the eastern sea- 
board to the frontiers of Pennsylvania or Kentucky, 
carried his Kous's version with him, and found it 
used in the log-cabin churches among the clearings 
of the West. Now, to quote the indignant note of a 
Christian woman returned from a western journey : 
"A tourist would have to carry a trunkful of dif- 
ferent hymn books in order to join in the worship of 
Presbyterian churches. I have been traveling all 
summer, and always went to my own church, and 
never found the same hymn book in any two 
churches ! " Doubtless, we have lost something in 
this loss of unity. At least, our fathers were not 
unwise in trying to secure unity of worship in the 
matter of psalmody. Is not that one thing which 
the twentieth century might well return to, — one 
book of praise for the entire Church ? Is there any 
reason why this part of worship should not be a 

7 



98 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

subject for presbyterial authority equally with the 
use of one version of the Holy Scriptures ? 

The change in the character of our hymns has 
been one of the most striking characteristics of the 
century. Until the Keunion of 1870, the preference 
of the churches was, for the most part, divided be- 
tween the Psalms in Rous's version, and Dr. 
Watts's Imitations of the Psalms, together with 
his Hymns and Divine Songs. These were printed 
in separate parts, and the arrangement was simple 
and effective, to say the least. It is notable that 
the Psalms in some version had a prominent part. 
It is a marvel and a misfortune that our Church has 
consented to drop most of these noble and inspired 
vehicles of praise from its hymnology. One might 
regret it on the ground of historic sympathy. If 
you will turn to an English prayer book of the 
times of Queen Elizabeth, or of Edward YI, or of 
the Charles's, you will find that the only hymns of 
the Church then used were the Psalms in the ver- 
sion of Sternhold and Hopkins. At a later period, 
from the days of the Westminster Assembly on, the 
version of Sir Francis Rous, as amended by the 
Scotch Assembly of 1650, grew into favor until, 
among the Puritan and Presbyterian churches of 
England, Scotland, Ulster, and America, it held the 
sole place. 

To be sure, the New Testament Church should 
not be bound to Old Testament psalmody. It 
seems to us unreasonable and unscriptural that ut- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 99 

terances which voice the fulfillment of the Messianic 
Psalms, and the faith of the Gospels and Epistles, 
and the experience of the Christian Church as 
moved by the Holy Spirit, should be refused a 
place in public worship. Never theless on the 
ground both of historic sympathy and of eminent 
fitness, the Psalms, in some metrical version or as 
chants, should have a permanent place in our wor- 
ship. They are without a rival as suitable vehicles 
for expressing human gratitude to God for all his 
benefits. There are no thanksgiving hymns of 
praise like those we may select from the Hebrew 
Psalter. 

Let us hope that, in that turning to the worthy 
history of the past which crops up in this dawn of 
the twentieth century, there will be a revival of 
the psalmody which has been consecrated through 
all the centuries past to the praise and service of 
Almighty God. Those noble utterances were 
voiced by the ancient people of God as they moved 
toward Jerusalem to their religious festivals, and 
" the Pilgrim Psalms " are among the sweetest of 
the Psalter. On the great days of worship the 
temples and the hillsides surrounding rang with the 
Psalms sung to Hebrew melodies by the people, and 
by the mighty choir of the Levites organized for 
the temple service. These are the hymns that Jesus 
sang as a boy, sang as a man, and from them his 
dying utterances were chosen. These are the 
hymns that voiced the worship of the Apostolic 

ILofC. 



100 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Church. These are the hymns that our Puritan and 
Presbyterian fathers sang in all their history pre- 
ceding the last century. They are just as fitting to- 
day to utter our sacred thanksgiving as at any 
period of God's Church, whether under the old or 
the new dispensation. Our new Hymnal is a book 
worthy of the favored place it has already taken in 
our Church. But it lacks one thing that a perfect 
book of praise should have : a selection of fifty or 
sixty of the Psalms of David, preferably in the 
version of Rous, or as near to the original as modern 
ideas of propriety and taste will permit. 

Till 

The Saceaments.— Ministeeial Manners 

In the administration of the Sacraments, baptism 
has suffered little change at the hands of time, ex- 
cept perhaps that the sense of its value has some- 
what diminished. There was long a feeling,— shall 
we call it a superstition ?— that caused the pioneer 
parent to mount and ride away over forest trail and 
prairie to fetch the minister to christen a dying 
child. It is rare that such an experience befalls the 
clergyman of to-day. The Sunday following the 
Communion of the Lord's Supper,— according to the 
custom, was wont to see a crowd of parents stand- 
ing before the pulpit with the children who had 
been born since the last observance, and the un- 
baptized offspring of those who had just been ad- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 101 

mitted to the Church. It was a solemn and im- 
pressive spectacle, as the pastor moved along the 
throng, accompanied by the senior elder who car- 
ried the font, sprinkling the water of baptism upon 
the brows of the little ones of God's covenant. 
Sometimes, a whole family, four or five or six chil- 
dren would receive at one time the sacrament of 
baptism. One does not note such scenes to-day. 
The preciousness to the parent and the value to the 
child, of the Covenant which gives the Christian's off- 
spring a birthright in the Church, and a title to its 
promises and ordinances, are well appreciated by 
many. Yet there is hardly that almost universal 
appropriation thereof which was the usage of early 
times. We would surely expect it to be otherwise 
in view of the marvelous turning of the hearts of 
the fathers to the children, which is expressed in 
the spread and growth of the Sunday-school move- 
ment. 

In the observance of the Lord's Supper the 
change has been more radical. The ante-commun- 
ion fast, the four-days' meeting, the action ser- 
mon, the post-communion service, have well-nigh 
ceased. The sacramental token, a bit of metal 
stamped with the initial letter of the minister or of 
the church, or simply with the capital " M " which 
betokened membership, and which gave the com- 
municant the right to come to the Supper, has been 
so completely eschewed that a collection of tokens 
is a curiosity to modern American Presbyterians. 



102 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The " communion card " or " token card " is the sole 
survival of this interesting custom. The narrow 
tables, spread with their snowy linen cloths, around 
which communicants sat in successive " tables " until 
all were served, are no more seen. The long " rolls " 
of unleavened bread, with flecks of brown upon the 
white, and laid crosswise upon the napkin-covered 
plate, are gone. The very cup itself — the Loving 
Cup of the Master, — his symbol of the Christian 
Brotherhood of Blood, is fast-disappearing before 
the tiny individual cuplets of glass ; and the stately 
tankard that the elder slowly carried through the 
aisle from which to replenish the sacred vessels, has 
been displaced by the patent " filler." So much for 
the discovery of the pernicious and all-pervading 
microbe ! Surely here has been evolution per 
saltum, and as radical as it is rapid. It would seem 
that in this respect, at least, it would be impossible 
for change to go farther. 

The chief function of the pastor, according to 
the New Testament, is teaching. To preach the 
gospel, discipling the nations, teaching them what- 
soever things the Lord commanded, is the divine 
mission to which Christ's ministers are committed. 
Our fathers of one hundred years ago magnified 
their office in this regard. They labored faithfully 
in word and doctrine ; they imitated the zeal of the 
apostles and primitive disciples in bearing the glad 
tidings to the scattered remnant of Israel and to the 
unbelieving. Their spirit abides with their chil- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 103 

dren. It may be truly said that the ministers of 
the Presbyterian Church take heed to the command 
of the aged Paul to the young Timothy, " Preach 
the word ! " 

But if the spirit survives, the method has 
changed. As the century lengthened, the sermon 
shortened. Dr. John McMillan, the pioneer of 
Western Pennsylvania, when counseling short ser- 
mons to his students, remarked, with a notable out- 
burst of progressiveness : " I have rarely known a 
conversion to be made beyond the hour ! " That 
expresses the minimum in his day. The hourglass 
upon the pulpit, which the preacher turned as he 
announced his text, gave the congregation the op- 
portunity to see that he did not give them scant 
measure. The people were rather pleased than 
otherwise, when he turned the glass, and started 
the sands a-running upon the second hour. 

The Genevan gown and the bands were worn by 
our fathers as the universally accepted badge of the 
Presbyterian clergyman. The innovation of preach- 
ing in ordinary clothes, then in " blacks," then in 
black frock coat, gradually made headway, largely 
at first through the poverty of ministers and people 
and the difficulty of obtaining preaching robes. 
The "bands" developed into the white necktie. 
The clerical vest and coat came into vogue, notably 
after the Civil War chaplains came home. Some of 
the divines of the middle of the century always ap- 
peared in the pulpit in a gentleman's full dress suit 



104 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

(swallow-tail coat), and down to our day such lead- 
ers as Drs. Adams, Musgrave, Beadle and Albert 
Barnes were rarely seen, and never heard, in any 
other raiment. To them it seemed but simple good 
manners that they should appear before the Lord 
and the people, in the high function of preaching, 
at least as well dressed as when going to an evening 
company. Some of the fathers carried this sense 
of fitness to the length of wearing black kid gloves 
in the pulpit. 

To-day there is a notable reaction, and in opposite 
directions. Some preachers eschew all clerical gar- 
ments, and affect a style that in no wise distin- 
guishes them from other men. They are simply as 
" a man among men." This is the motto of their 
method, which certainly has beneath it at least the 
worthy purpose to cultivate genuine personal manli- 
ness. Other preachers are returning to the custom 
of the Scotch, English and Continental Presby- 
terians, as at first practiced by our American 
fathers, and are assuming the Genevan gown for 
public duty. 

Whether in ordinary life a preacher shall wear a 
clerical coat, or dress as other men, is a matter of 
taste. But surely if there were no considerations 
of propriety, and of reverence, and of regard for 
due order and uniformity, a sense of historic fitness 
would plead for the readoption of the preaching 
gown. It is hard for older men to take up new 
ways ; but every young minister may well be coun- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 105 

seled to return to the good old way of pulpit dress. 
If a special pulpit vestment is proper, as the Church 
undoubtedly believes, it would seem that the his- 
toric and ecclesiastical robe of the scholar and 
divine, should be preferred to the prevailing vest- 
ment of black frock coat, clerical vest and white 
necktie. 

Eeviewing these changes in the methods of church 
worship, we cannot forbear some natural feelings of 
regret as we say good-by to the old ways, endeared 
to many of us by sweet and sacred associations. 
"We are impressed by their simplicity ; their adher- 
ence to the spirit and forms of the earlier founders 
and fathers of our venerable communion, and by 
their perfect adaptation to the conditions and char- 
acters of the pioneers. But we are to remember, 
even amidst our tears, that the Church is also under 
a law of development, ordered and animated by the 
Spirit of God, the guiding force of all ecclesiastical 
history. For us and for our environment the pres- 
ent conditions may be the most helpful. 

Yet the past has much to teach us ; and its temper 
and usages should at least modify our present views, 
and give a savor of historic conservatism to the 
spirit of restlessness and change which, under the 
name of progress, may be hurrying us into modes 
and measures of doubtful value. And who knows ? 
It has often occurred and may again come to pass, 
that the wheel shall " come full circle round," and 
the fashion of our fathers may become the fashion 



106 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

of our children, ere the twentieth century has been 
merged with the mighty past. Then, the com- 
memorative sacrament which shall be celebrated in 
this historic city to hail the dawn of the twenty- 
first century, will be observed after the manner of 
our Scotch and Scotch-Irish pioneers, and the 
Assembly Hall of that era shall ring with the dear 
old Psalms in meter ; the Moderator, clerks and 
ministerial commissioners will appear in all public 
functions in the Genevan gown, and the military 
moustache will have ceased from the clerical lip ! 

IX 

The Growth and Development of Sunday 
schools 

The religious training of the young is no new 
work. It is as old as the first parents ; as the first 
priest ; as the first Church. The instincts of hu- 
manity assert the need of molding young lives into 
usefulness. God provided for it in the religious laws 
of the Jewish Commonwealth. Children were em- 
braced in all Israel's national covenants. Children 
were to be taught the fundamental truths of reli- 
gion as soon as they had reached years to compre- 
hend them. The primitive Church understood this 
duty, and its catechumens were an especial class in- 
structed with patience and fidelity in the mysteries 
of the new faith. The divines and parliamentary 
assessors, peers and commons, of the Westminster 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 107 

Assembly a quarter-millennium ago clearly saw the 
importance of this duty. Their debates show how 
well they understood that the only hope of main- 
taining the Protestant religion or any true faith in 
Great Britain, lay in educating the young genera- 
tion. Their Shorter Catechism was the worthy 
product of this conviction. It is not too much to 
say that this effort to provide ministers, teachers, 
and parents, with the means of instructing young 
people in the principles and duties of religion, con- 
tributed as much as any other one cause to secure 
the liberties of Scotland and England, and to lay 
sure foundations for the civil and religious freedom 
of the colonies of America. 

It was no new thing, therefore, only a new method 
that Eobert Eaikes attempted. But that attempt 
was the signal for a revolution. It moved through 
Great Britain. It crossed the Atlantic. It found a 
hospitable reception in the new Eepublic of the 
West. It was adopted, adapted, assimilated. In 
this movement our fathers took a leading part. 
And now the Sunday-school army is a mighty host. 
It embraces the choicest spirits of the Church and 
of the nation. Justices of the United States Su- 
preme Court are enrolled in it. President McKin- 
ley is a past-superintendent of a Sunday school. 
Senators, Congressmen, Governors, officers of the 
army and navy, countless men of affairs and honor- 
able women not a few — one million and a half 
(1,394,630), are the leaders of the host. And the 



108 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

youth and children? They are as the stars of 
heaven for multitude. In the United States alone 
there are nearly thirteen millions enlisted in the 
Sunday-school ranks, and in Europe more than five 
millions more. 

Of this mighty host our own communion numbers 
1,085,205. Let us aid our imagination to grasp such 
a host by supposing our 7,000 Sunday schools to be 
gathered here in Philadelphia to march across the 
continent in commemoration of the twentieth cen- 
tury's advent. They start out two by two, four 
paces between every two schools. Twenty miles a 
day will be march enough for such young soldiers to 
make, and on the first night, the head of the column 
will halt at Paoli. By the close of the first week, 
the van is encamped for Sabbath rest a day's journey 
beyond Harrisburg and the Susquehanna river. At 
the close of the second week, the column has climbed 
the Alleghany Mountains, and has halted at Portage. 
On Monday it begins the descent of the mountain, 
presses on over the rolling foothills, by the rippling 
waters of the Conemaugh. By Thursday it is at 
Pittsburg, whose big-hearted populace, so strongly 
leavened with the bracing truths of the Shorter 
Catechism, has turned out to cheer our twentieth 
century pilgrims on their way. The third week ends 
with the column halted at New Galilee, on the bor- 
der of Ohio. Onward now it moves to spend the 
night at New Lisbon, in Columbiana County. An- 
other day's march brings the column to Alliance ; 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 109 

and then, with, their young hearts a-quiver with 
patriotism, they enter the precincts of Canton. 
They march before the well-known historic house 
on whose porch President McKinley stands to re- 
view them. How they cheer, and wave their ban- 
ners of blue, and sing until the Buckeye blossoms 
fairly shake amid their broad leaves! They are 
425 miles from Philadelphia. They have been 
nearly four weeks upon the journey, and the rear 
of the mighty army has not yet started from 
Philadelphia ! 

Could we take some high vantage point, and have 
our eyes gifted with such vision as the young 
prophet of Dothan received from Elisha's touch, 
what a scene would unfold before us ! We see a 
line of children, youths, boys and girls, in their 
bright apparel, their sweet young faces enlivened 
with the light of Eternal Hope, their superintend- 
ents, teachers, officers and pastors marching at their 
sides, winding through the valleys and over the 
hills, and along the streams, trailing up the moun- 
tain sides, spanning the whole vast length of Penn- 
sylvania, and reaching sixty miles into Ohio I 
These are the crusading children of the twentieth 
century as we see them in their fancied journey. 
God help them on that real journey which they are 
to make across the new era that has dawned upon 
us, and upon them ! Only here and there shall one 
reach the border of the twenty-first century, but 
let us hope and pray and labor that all may pass 



110 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

rejoicing into the home of the Eternal Ages. Upon 
that vast array of youthful life, beauty and vigor, 
depend the hopes of the Church and the world for 
the age which opens before us. 

To most of us here present the grasp upon the 
future is but limited ; to some of us it is very faint, 
and to all of us it is uncertain. To the young peo- 
ple of our homes and the members of our Sabbath 
schools, these wards of the Church, belongs the 
future with all its possibilities of good, and alas, its 
possibilities of evil, as well. We may have, we must 
have a brighter hope and firmer faith in the success 
of the kingdom of Christ, as we face this century, 
than would have been possible with our fathers in 
the nineteenth century. Then Sunday schools were 
comparatively unknown. Their wonderful progress, 
their mighty movement across the Continent and 
through the century had just begun. ]STo phe- 
nomenon is more remarkable, and none fuller of hope 
to the Church than this growth, in and around the 
Church, of those who are to take the places of the 
fathers and leaders. 

X 

The Kevival of Lay Activities. — Woman's 
Work 

The origin of Sunday schools was the birth of a 
new force within the Christian Church. It opened 
the way for believing men and women to take part 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 111 

in God's work. The religious doubts and unbelief 
and indifference which had encrusted and befogged 
the Church of the last decade of the eighteenth 
century, were broken and dissipated when brought 
in contact with this element of activity. The best 
cure for doubt is doing. The Sunday school saved 
the Christian Church from the sterility of Arianism 
and the anaconda folds of infidelity, by setting be- 
lievers to work as Christ's yoke-fellows. 

Men worked off their indifference ; and with in- 
difference unbelief faded away. Duty displaced 
doubt. Contact with humanity in holy toil showed 
humanity's need of religious faith. The effort to 
save the erring disclosed the need of divine aid in 
well-doing. In the face of the world's opposition, 
men cried out to God and clung to him with new 
trust. Under the burden of human sin and woe, 
they sought alike the divine compassion and the 
divine help. In relieving the sorrows of helpless 
childhood, men learned the infinite tenderness of 
the Christ, and the Fatherhood of God. Pity grew 
by what it fed upon. Hope uprose from the future, 
which always belongs to the young. Above all, 
love, the love of God and of helpless human beings, 
seized up the Church into its infinite bosom, until 
she learned, as never before, the old inspired word 
uttered through the mighty soul that men call St. 
Paul : " Now abideth faith, hope and love ; . . . 
and the greatest of these is love." 

"Woman, by nature and divine election first in the 



112 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

order of child-saving, was brought into the Sunday- 
school service. Her smothered voice was heard 
again in the churches. Her swathed activities were 
unloosed, and her suppressed nature given larger 
bounds. She was emancipated for Christian work. 
It seemed like the emergence of a new race. It 
was the rebirth of womanhood into the Church of 
the Son of Mary. The nineteenth century is con- 
spicuous above all others, except perhaps the first, 
by its fidelity to nature and the gospel in following 
the divine word : " Neither is the man without the 
woman nor the woman without the man " ; " There 
is neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ 
Jesus." 

See what Christian women, and women every- 
where are doing and planning to do ! In business, 
in religious and secular education, on the platform, 
in literature, in professional life, in charities as well 
as in society and the home, she is potent, and in 
some of these fields is the most potent influence. 
It seems incredible that one hundred, yes, fifty, 
years ago, this vast force was almost voiceless and 
unused in the Church and the community. Kun 
back the threads of history along the century to 
the first decade. You put your finger on the chief 
origin and cause of this great revolution and refor- 
mation in the Sunday-school movement which 
brought woman into the field, and gave her a suita- 
ble sphere for the exercise and enlargement of her 
powers. God only knows what this movement has 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 113 

■wrought ; or where it will end. But let us thank 
him for it, or for anything else that brings the 
Church back to the spirit and essential methods of 
the primitive century. 

Home missions, foreign missions, all departments 
of our Christian service for humanity have felt the 
up-lift and inspiration of this new element in the 
Church's work. For example, the first distinctive 
organization of women, the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society, was founded in 1870. Its contribu- 
tions to date have been $3,595,458 ! And there 
have come with these practical and pecuniary ad- 
vantages other and perhaps more valuable elements 
of service. The womanly characteristics have been 
transfused into the Church's veins, and woman her- 
self has been developed into a larger, freer, finer 
and more efficient being. The revival of lay activi- 
ties meant more to woman in personal development 
of spiritual power and influence than to man. 

But to both sexes it meant far more than this 
brief glance can indicate. They grew side by side, 
as is the natural and divine order, into the ever- 
advancing and widening activities of the era. To- 
gether they wrought upon and wrought themselves 
into the mighty structure of the country's progress 
in religious, philanthropic, educational and social 
development. But it must be said, in the interests 
of truth, that to the men of the Church, at first 
obstructive, then reluctant, then grudgingly con- 
senting, and at last heartily cooperating, the in- 

8 



114 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

spiring influence of mother, wife, sister, and women- 
friends, gave a fresh impulse in service, a new heart 
for duty, and a vigor, kindliness, tact and devout- 
ness which have made their own part in the work 
of God and his Church far more valuable than 
otherwise it would have been. 

XI 
The Gkowth of Woeld Evangelization 

Another speaker is to tell you to-day of the 
triumphant progress of the foreign missionary 
cause across the closed century. But we may at 
least sweep an eye over the field, and get a glimpse 
of achievements of our Church. It is true that our 
foreign missions, as we now use the term, were 
born within the nineteenth century. But the spirit 
of missions was strong in the hearts of our fore- 
fathers. Struggling as they were with the poverty, 
perils and untoward conditions of a new country, 
and with the almost overwhelming burden of build- 
ing up civilization and religion in the wilderness, 
they nevertheless cherished a deep concern for the 
heathen around them. The United States was 
then, with the exception of a strip along the At- 
lantic seaboard, one vast heathen continent occupied 
by the savage Indians. 

The early records of Presbytery and Synod show 
that the responsibility for converting the Indian 
tribes weighed heavily upon the leaders of the little 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 115 

Church in the wilderness, and that from time to 
time, they sought their evangelization. Their 
efforts seem paltry as compared with our world-wide 
projects and achievements. But it ill becomes us to 
despise the day of small things. Those heroic 
pioneers were planting the germs of many worthy 
endeavors which have developed into matters of 
continental proportions. The handful of seed, sown 
in humble faith and in straitened circumstances, 
is waving like the forests of Lebanon. As we lift 
the paean of praise to Almighty God for the 
garnered sheaves of the world-harvest, let us not 
forget that spirit of the past which gave humanity 
such missionaries as John Elliot, David and John 
Brainerd. 

In the early decades of the century, Presbyterian 
interest in world-wide missions was expressed 
through the " American Board of Commissioners of 
Foreign Missions " organized in 1810. This board 
absorbed the " United Foreign Missionary Society " 
organized in 1817 by the Presbyterian, the Reformed 
Dutch and the Associate Reformed Churches. It 
was not until 1831 that a distinctly Presbyterian 
foreign missionary organization was formed by the 
Synod of Pittsburg, entitled " The "Western Foreign 
Missionary Society." This formed the nucleus of 
the Presbyterian Board created in 1837 by the Old 
School Assembly, after separation from the New 
School. The New School Assembly continued to 
support the American Board until the reunion of 



116 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

1870, since which event the present Board, with its 
headquarters in New York, has been the organ of 
the Church for evangelizing the unbelieving world. 
Its first home was at No. 29 Centre Street, still dear 
to the memory of some of us. Thence, in 1888, the 
offices were transferred to the old Lenox house, No. 
53 Fifth Avenue, where they continued until 1895 ; 
when all the Church's Boards centered in New York 
were transferred to the splendid mission building at 
No. 156 Fifth Avenue. 

In that noble edifice you may stand beside one of 
the faithful secretaries or one of their devoted 
helpers, and put your finger upon the religious 
pulse of the world. Call the roll of the continents. 
Our Church is or has been in every one. Call the 
roll of the heathen nations. Our Church has mis- 
sion stations in all the great peoples of Paganism. 
The Indians have been transferred to the Home 
Board, but still both the Americas are represented 
there. Africa is there, — poor, unhappy, oppressed 
Africa, that reached out her hands to give a home 
to the Saviour of men, when he fled from his native 
country to escape the murderer's hand, and that still 
reaches out hands to God and to his people pleading 
for the gospel. Asia is represented by the splendid 
missions in India, Siam, Laos, China, Japan, Korea, 
Syria, and Persia. Europe has no official rep- 
resentative now, except in the sympathetic aid and 
countenance given to the evangelical cause in 
France, and in Italy where the sons of the Wal- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 117 

denses are bearing throughout their sunny valleys 
the standard of a pure gospel which so long had 
floated on the peaks of the Cottian Alps. And 
there, too, you may come in touch with the last 
and largest of our American acquisitions, the 
Philippine Archipelago. Our beloved Church has 
bound a zone of Christian love and helpfulness 
around the world. She is catholic ; she is cosmo- 
politan ; she is polyglot ; she is Pentecostal ! All 
the chief ethnic religions she has brought in contact 
with Christianity. We have heard the divine 
Master's voice, "Go ye into all the world, and 
disciple the nations." How far short we have 
come, we know and humbly acknowledge. But it 
is highly becoming that we praise God on this com- 
memorative day for the grace he has given, and for 
the triumphs of his grace which he has wrought 
through us. 

This progress has not been achieved without 
sacrifice. Of money? Yes. But one shames to 
speak of that in the same breath with the costly 
sacrifices of the heroic and saintly men and women 
who have borne the cross, as our representatives, 
into pagan lands. We remember to-day the worthy 
confessors who by suffering, sickness, and silent 
death, have been our Lord's witnesses. We will 
think of the slain witnesses whom God honored with 
a place in the noble army of martyrs, — from our 
proto-martyr, Walter Lowrie, who passed through 
the waters to the Throne before the sea of glass, to 



118 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

the last of those who witnessed with their lives, 
Taylor, the Hodges, the Simcoxes, who passed 
through the furnace of fire to the eternal corona- 
tion of the blessed. Strange, both our first and our 
last martyrs fell at the hand of the Chinese! 
Surely, by their blood that great empire is sealed 
more sacredly than ever as the possession of our 
Lord Jesus Christ ! 

XII 

The Growth of Philanthropy 

In nothing has the Church of the nineteenth cen- 
tury been more noteworthy than in the growth of 
practical philanthropy. The temperance reform has 
won its most notable victories in the United States. 
The drinking habits of Europe were inherited by 
our Colonial ancestors, and wine and strong drinks 
were commonly used by ministers and elders and 
people one hundred years ago. They were not, 
however, conspicuously devoted to liquors, as has 
been generally believed and slanderously asserted, 
especially from the perverted popular views of the 
so-called Whiskey Insurrection of Western Penn- 
sylvania. The counties of that State in which the 
Presbyterian element was strongest, and still largely 
prevails, are now the most thoroughgoing tem- 
perance and prohibition communities. The deliver- 
ances of our General Assembly in behalf of total 
abstinence again and again repeated have not been 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 119 

excelled in vigor and point by any body of Chris- 
tians. 

The sentiment of our Church, voiced and led by 
our Temperance Committee, is overwhelmingly in 
favor of total abstinence, and of restrictive or pro- 
hibitive legislation against the manufacture and sale 
of intoxicants. That noble organization, the 
Women's Christian Temperance Union, has drawn 
an army of recruits from our communion. One of 
the earliest and warmest champions of temperance 
was the Rev. Elisha Macurdy of Western Pennsyl- 
vania. At a later date arose such leaders as John 
Chambers of Philadelphia, known as the " War 
Horse" of Temperance; the venerable and vener- 
ated Theodore L. Cuyler, who still lives and main- 
tains a catholic bishopric in the churches, and that 
incomparable and heroic champion, Thomas Hunt, 
whose courage, eloquence, tact and wit won him a 
foremost place among platform orators. 

The anti-slavery cause had many of its most con- 
spicuous advocates within our fold. The ringing 
deliverance of 1818, represented the sentiments of 
our fathers, and it was never canceled by their 
sons ; although it must be confessed that the days 
came when in many sections, it was neutralized by 
the advance of pro-slavery sentiment and sympathy. 
Yet there was always a large remnant who refused 
to lower the standard, and the majority of our com- 
municants were always opposed to slavery. Had 
the leaders of later davs been more faithful to the 



120 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

early record, our country might have been saved 
the fratricidal strife of the Civil War of the '60's, 
Nevertheless, it came about, in God's providence, that 
he who gave forth the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
tion that destroyed American Negro slavery, was a 
worshiper in the New York Avenue Presbyterian 
Church of 7v x ashington, whose pew still remains un- 
touched by modern improvements, a patriotic relic 
of our first martyred President, Abraham Lincoln. 

That emancipation thrust upon the nation and 
the churches a duty which Presbyterians were not 
slow to undertake. The Board of Missions to 
Freedmen was organized, and with unfailing fidelity 
and rare success has planted and is maintaining 
schools, colleges, seminaries, and churches, among 
American citizens of African descent. No work 
wrought for our Master has superior claims upon 
our support as Christians, philanthropists, and pa- 
triots. 

In practical charities our Church has made enor- 
mous progress. The first American eleemosynary 
institutions were upon Union foundations, and they 
received from our membership a liberal and often a 
chief support in money and oversight. Distinct- 
ively Presbyterian charities were hardly known 
before the middle of the century. It was after the 
Keunion of 1870 that the Church awoke to the duty 
of providing for those of her own household, and 
thus proving her fidelity to the faith. Hospitals, 
Asylums, Homes for Widows and Single Women, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 121 

for Old Men and for Aged Couples, Orphanages, and 
Training Schools for Nurses — all under the name 
and foster of our own Church, sprang up in our 
chief cities and towns. Some of these are not ex- 
celled by any like institutions in Europe and Amer- 
ica. Our Assembly provides no special statistical 
column for such charities, and one can make no 
official and accurate estimate of their extent and 
value. But the money so placed in these holy in- 
vestments must mount into the millions. 

The good work goes on and will go on. The 
spirit and behest of Christianity cover with the 
mantle of divine love the poor, the needy, the suf- 
fering, the helpless, the incurables. In nothing 
does our Church so fully express the divine char- 
acter of Jesus and the infinite compassion of the 
All-Father. This revival of Christian charity, the 
only lasting philanthropy, is the Great Awakening 
of the closing decades of the nineteenth century. 
It supplemented the Great Keligious Awakening 
of the early years, which led men to conviction of 
sin and to personal consecration of their lives in 
holy faith to Jesus Christ, their Saviour. These 
elements of the religious life and character are not 
antagonistic. They are bound together by the 
benediction of God in the holiest wedlock. May 
they never be put asunder ! The Holy Spirit of 
love who wins a soul to the obedience of Christ, is 
the same Holy Spirit of love that sets the soul upon 
the pathway of human charity and helpfulness. 



122 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

XIII 
A PREDICTION OF THE HISTORIC SPIRIT 

History, like natural and physical science, can 
never be said to have perfected its function until it 
can prophesy. The knowledge drawn from the 
past should be the safe ground for predicting the 
future. God's laws are changeless. Man's nature and 
needs are the same in all ages and races. That which 
has been shall be, and there is nothing new under 
the sun. Therefore, we may always look for the 
recurring spirit of the Olden Time to dominate the 
thought and actions of men, even though it be re- 
vealed under new methods adapted to the varying 
conditions of humanity in different eras. It is not 
without reason, therefore, that standing to-day on 
the border of a new century, and looking back over 
the past, and regarding the tendencies of the pres- 
ent, we may venture to predict some things con- 
cerning the kingdom and Church of Christ in 
whose upbuilding God has given us a worthy part. 

In the twentieth century Christ will remain the 
central figure in the Church. Theology will be 
Christo-centric. The advance in foreign missions, 
the most remarkable of the religious phenomena of 
the nineteenth century, will not be retarded. 
Christianity must push forward to its inevitable 
destiny. Every creature under the circle of the 
sun must have a knowledge of Jesus the Saviour. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 123 

Christian ethics, the pure morals of the gospel, must 
be carried with, and as part of, the religion of Jesus. 
The elevation of the human race as a consequence 
of its evangelization will proceed. 

The social problems which have exercised the 
human mind during the last half century will be- 
come dearer to the Church. The ministry and laity 
alike will recognize a Christian Communism ; that 
the brotherhood of man is an essential feature of 
Christianity. To eliminate it cuts the core out of 
our religion. The very foundation truth of Christ's 
system of religion, morals, and sociology, is the 
brotherhood of man in Christ, and the Fatherhood 
of God over all. 

More and more the Church must become one in 
spirit. The barriers dividing denominations and 
families of Christianity may not be removed, prob- 
ably will not be ; but they will be so lowered that 
over them Christian hearts, under whatever form 
of Christianity, can feel the beat of a common 
brotherhood. 

The Church of the future will be a teaching 
Church. Doctrines are essential to the vitality of 
Christianity. The cry against doctrinal preaching 
is imbecile. Christ was " Master," that is teacher. 
His first followers were " disciples," that is schol- 
ars. A religion without thought, that does not 
appeal to the intellectual as well as to the moral 
and emotional nature, cannot live permanently 
among men. To take doctrine from Christianity is 



124 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

to emasculate it. An invertebrate preaching will 
never hold mankind. 

The Church of the twentieth century will be 
more and more an evangelistic Church. The 
methods of the earlier evangelists, Edwards, Fin- 
ney, Nettleton, Park, Beecher, Baker, and of the 
prince of all evangelists, D wight L. Moody, may 
not be continued, will doubtless be modified ; but 
their spirit will animate the Church. The gospel 
must be preached at home. "Beginning at Jeru- 
salem " is the law of Jesus. City missions, home 
missions, the evangelization of those next door to 
us, the saving of men from their sins as well as 
from the consequences of their sins, will be the 
mighty purpose of the preachers and of the Chris- 
tian Churches of the coming century. 

The twentieth century Church will continue to 
be a singing Church. The spirit of song brought 
in by the Wesleys and the early Methodists, which 
has been so wonderfully developed, will not be 
suppressed. Yet there will certainly be a return in 
some degree to the Psalmody of the earlier Chris- 
tianity. The Psalms of David have been well-nigh 
banished from our sanctuaries. They must come 
back again, and take their place side by side with 
the inspiring, and one might say, the inspired 
hymns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

The twentieth century will see the complete 
reconciliation between the pulpit and the labora- 
tory. The conflict between science and religion 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 125 

must cease. There never was any real ground for 
it. The heavens declare the glory of God. All 
works of God praise him, and the Church should 
be the first to see this and the firmest to assert it. 
All new knowledge is treasure-trove for King 
Jesus. There is nothing in science, in itself con- 
sidered, to inculcate doubt. Scientific doubts do 
not differ from other doubts which are generated 
by the natural frailty of unregenerated nature, and 
the inevitable quest of honest souls for truth in the 
midst of life's deep mysteries. Most of the high 
priests of science in the nineteenth century have 
been believers in God and in Christ. Davy, Her- 
schel, Farraday, Henry, Agassiz, Humboldt, Helm- 
holtz, Yirchow, Owen, Clark- Max well, Pasteur, 
Dana, Gray, Carruthers, Goode, Cresson, Lord Kel- 
vin (Sir "William Thompson), Sir Win. Dawson — 
and a host of others who have stood upon the 
loftiest pinnacles of science have all been believers 
in Unseen Things. The antagonism which was so 
manifest in the middle of the century has already 
begun to disappear. The Church has learned a 
lesson, as well as men of science. She will not be 
so ready in the future to suspect scientific dis- 
coveries, however radical at first they may seem, 
but will hold out a hospitable hand to all natural 
truth. 

Science has been a most helpful handmaid to re- 
ligion. The world-wide triumphs of Christianity 
have been made possible by the achievements of 



126 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

explorers, inventors, physicists, which have opened 
up new countries and the old continents to civiliza- 
tion. Commerce and the Church of Christ have 
advanced side by side, sometimes one leading, some- 
times the other. Archaeology, ethnology, anthro- 
pology, have contributed freely to confirm the 
veracity of Holy Scripture. This helpfulness will 
increase with every decade of the new century. 

The nineteenth century has seen great divisions 
and great healings of divisions in our beloved Zion. 
The twentieth century will be one of consolidation 
and closer union. The first breach was the out- 
going of the Cumberland Presbytery which proved 
the nucleus of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. 
The disruption of 1837 followed, and, after a full 
generation of separate life, the Old School and the 
New School assemblies again became one in the 
autumn of 1869. The outbreak of the rebellion of 
1861 sent another line of cleavage through the 
Church, which issued in the creation of the South- 
ern General Assembly. It is a curious historic 
coincidence that the great disruptions of the century, 
those of 1837 and 1861, occurred in the first and 
second sanctuaries of the Church and congregation 
of which your speaker has the honor to be pastor. 
The day shall come, though he may not live to see 
it with earthly vision, when the last division like 
the first shall be healed, and brethren who were 
separated by the barriers of civil war shall be 
reunited in the ecclesiastical faith, order, and com- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 127 

munion, of their common ancestors. When that 
good day shall come, it shall be in order for the 
pastor and people of the Tabernacle Presbyterian 
Church to invite that Keunion General Assembly 
which shall bind together the Churches of the 
North and South, to meet in its third house of 
worship. This will be the happy climax of a his- 
toric coincidence which made the first and second 
sanctuaries the scene of fraternal struggle and sep- 
aration. God speed the day ! 

The twentieth century will continue to heed with 
growing affection and fidelity our Lord's behest, 
" Feed my lambs." The children of the Covenant 
will be acknowledged, and taught to acknowledge 
themselves as " Christian children," by holy birth- 
right members of the Church of Christ. Sabbath- 
school methods will change, but the nurturing 
spirit will abide. The Home Department will en- 
large and embrace the Church membership. The 
Bible will be loved and used with increasing devotion, 
and with a reverence that cannot be broken, as 
God's Book of Life for old and young. The asso- 
ciations of young men and young women, and 
societies of Christian Endeavor, will prove their 
right to a name and place in the sanctuary and under 
the Church's wing. The men of the Church will 
learn at last the value of organization for Christian 
work, as their sisters in the faith already have 
learned it, and the Church's power, influence, and 
gifts, will largely increase. Christians shall appre- 



128 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

ciate at its full value the influence of Christian 
literature and a Christian press for the vindication 
of Christian truth, and for the maintenance of 
Christian character and life among the followers of 
Jesus. 

Above all else the host of God in the Presby- 
terian corps shall bear aloft with ever waxing 
fervor, faith, and intelligence, the banner of 
Love ; love of God ; love of the brethren ; love of 
the souls of men, and that holy charity which runs 
with daily relief to all the brotherhood of man 
whose wants and sorrows shall call for brotherly 
aid. The twentieth century will be a century of 
Action inspired by Duty and Love. 

' ' Here by his love is his Church led forth 
From the East and West, from the South and North, 

11 Ever a pilgrim, thro' snow, thro' heat, 
Thro' life, thro' death, till she kiss Love's feet. 

11 Yea, my God, till her glad eyes see 
Love, the Lord of Eternity ! " x 

Fathers and Brethren : — You have met for this 
historic commemoration on historic ground. The 
national shrines which are seated here have been 
made hallowed in a large degree by the patriotic 
devotion of your ancestors. Therein Witherspoon 
plead for independence, and Charles Thomson, the 
ruling elder, kept the records of that first and great 
Congress that rocked the cradle of liberty. Here 
1 Bishop Chad wick of Ireland : " Poems Chiefly Sacred." 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 129 

Elias Boudinot presided over a Congress where the 
Presbyterian Bishops, George W. Duffield and 
Ashbel Green offered prayers to the nation's God 
as chaplains, conjointly with the Episcopal Bishop 
White. Here John Kodgers, soldier, patriot, and 
friend of Washington, presided over the first Gen- 
eral Assembly, which, small as it was, held many 
commissioners, who like McWhorter and Woodhull 
and Latta and Azel Eoe, had helped, on many 
foughten fields, to win our national independence. 

Here began the organic life of your Reverend 
and Yenerable Body as General Presbytery, as 
General Synod, and as General Assembly (1788). 
Here in 1758 was healed the first great division of 
the Church, that of 1741. Here the first Reunion 
Assembly of 1870 was held, as here also the great 
disruptions had occurred in 1837 and in 1861. 
Here, three of the important Commissions of the 
Assembly, the Boards of Education, of Ministerial 
Relief, and of Publication, are domiciled. Here, in 
your beautiful Witherspoon Building, whose very 
outer walls give forth " sermons in stones " of the 
history of your life and progress, you may visit the 
halls of the Presbyterian Historical Society which 
represents catholic Presbyterianism in America, 
although your venerable body holds thereto the 
relation of elder brother. 

And here you may see "without money and 
without price" the mute assembly of the heroes 
and heroines of your past history, marshaled, by 

9 



130 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

the liberality of Philadelphia Presbyterians and the 
generous support of many ecclesiastical and educa- 
tional and charitable institutions, in the " Historical 
and Missionary Exhibition" held in our beautiful 
Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Surely, you will drink in somewhat of the spirit 
of these surroundings. You will know more of 
your Church's worthy record. You will be quick- 
ened with new love and zeal for her, and go forth 
to tell unto your children, as did the Hebrew 
fathers at the paschal supper, the great things that 
God has wrought through the nursing fathers of 
your ancestral faith. 

The symbol of the Church of Philadelphia of the 
Apocalypse was an open door. Fitly an open door 
has been chosen as the device upon the Seal of your 
ancient Presbytery of Philadelphia. Within that 
door is displayed a figure of " the key of the house 
of David." It is the graceful and grateful office of 
Philadelphia pastors and churchmen to set before 
you that open door, and to place in your hands the 
key of that historic house of the Lord which has 
been made great by the toils and pains of the men 
and women of the past; which has been made 
greater still by the pains and toils, the sacrifices, 
the sufferings, the generous gifts of money, the yet 
more generous gifts of time and strength and 
health and energy, by which all that this Assembly 
represents has been made possible in the dawn of 
the twentieth century. Behold the open door ! 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 131 

Keceive the key ! Enter into the house, this house 
beautiful. Behold the grandeur of those trophies 
that everywhere abound, and go forth with that 
key in your hands to unlock to others those historic 
treasures that to-day, more than ever, are made 
your own. 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE DEVELOPED 
IN THE PROGRESS OF TIME 



BY THE 

KEY. HENRY COLLIN MINTON, D. D. 



THE DIVINE PURPOSE DEVELOPED IN 
THE PEOGKESS OF TIME 

BY THE 

EEV. HENRY COLLIN MINTON, D. D. 



It is no great idea or achievement of ours which 
has furnished the occasion for these interesting 
exercises to-day. The unique event which we are 
celebrating came to pass altogether without our 
authority and without our assistance. The moving 
centuries never pause to avail themselves of our 
opinion concerning them. The old century turned 
its back upon us wholly indifferent to our regard, 
and the new one has taken forcible possession of us 
without consulting our interest or our consent. 
The broad river wends its way down toward the 
sea, indifferent to the ships that plow its surface, 
and to the busy scenes of industry with which its 
banks are fringed. Down its own chosen channel 
it smoothly glides, unmoved by the ambitions and 
tumults and rivalries and conquests of men. Like 
the noiseless flow of the peaceful river, the proces- 
sion of the ages moves solemnly on, unconcerned 
with the shifting of the scenes, heedless of the 
fortunes of the actors, unresponsive to the comedies 

135 



136 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

and tragedies which are ushered in and then, in 
turn, are discharged into oblivion. 

I suppose it should not be counted very strange 
if the advance out of the nineteenth century of the 
Christian era into the twentieth should give fresh 
vigor to the historical spirit and new emphasis to 
the historical method. Such an epoch, command- 
ing universal interest and signalizing in a peculiar 
manner, as it does, the onward passage of time, is 
a sublime reminder that the great volume of history 
is being constantly and rapidly enlarged. And such 
an impulse is wholly in keeping with a very notice- 
able tendency in recent thinking. How often are 
we impressively admonished that we must interpret 
everything we know in the light of all the history 
by which it came to be what it is ! With august 
wisdom we are reminded that the secret of all being 
is in its becoming. No certificate of character is 
valid without a sketch of the pedigree of its sub- 
ject. He who knows to-day but is ignorant of 
yesterday, knows nothing. We have no acquaint- 
ance worth mentioning with our neighbor unless 
we knew his father and his father and so on back 
ad infinitum. 

Accordingly, we are fond of calling all our 
knowledge, as well as all our ignorance, history. 
The time element is indispensable. The study 
of nature is natural history ; the study of the 
world is world-history. Man is an enigma to 
himself till the mystery of his origin has been 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 137 

solved, till the long road he has traveled has 
been traced. The shining firmaments are sheer 
chaos till the beautiful order into which they have 
somehow crystallized has been traced back to its pri- 
mordial star-dust. The old earth on which we live is a 
riddle till the geological eras have been summoned 
and have given their luminous testimony. And so 
it is that nebular hypotheses and prehistoric origins 
have been put forth as the richest finds of nine- 
teenth-century research, and, with vastly extended 
areas and microscopic vision, the emancipated intel- 
lect would fain wrest its treasured secrets from the 
coffers of the speechless past. 

"We can have no other interest in this tendency of 
thought just now than to take note that it exists. 
The present moment is a cross-section of the eternal 
ages; the present age is but a link in the chain 
which stretches " from everlasting to everlasting." 
Progress, development, becoming, evolution, history, 
— whatever we may name it — is pronounced the 
sign by which we are to conquer, and this sign, as 
if by magic, makes unmeasured aeons the measur- 
ing units, and bewildering world-cycles as the brief 
span of a single day. 

But such a comprehensive programme means a 
philosophy of history. Every student of history is 
a philosopher in disguise. If a science of history is 
possible it is because history is itself scientific. We 
may bring our best thoughts to the study of the 
processes of time, but we cannot put into those 



138 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

processes what is not already there. That all his- 
tory bears the marks of mind is a truism that is 
venerable with age. The larger the outlook and 
the clearer the view which we can command, the 
more convincing is the evidence of mind running 
through it all. The insect whose threescore-and- 
ten is measured off by a single round on the dial- 
plate of time has an infinitely smaller chance of 
becoming a philosophical historian than has the 
patient, painstaking student who follows up the 
successive stages in the making and maturing of a 
world. The spontaneous and instinctive impulse of 
the mind is to decipher the lessons with which the 
ages of the past are richly charged. The astron- 
omer is spelling out the schedule of the stars ; and 
the science of geology is the tracing of mind in its 
slow and steady march along the highway of the 
unrecorded ages. The vast cosmos of which we are 
a part stretches back through countless ages of time 
as well as out through boundless areas of space. 
Evolution, writ large or small, is but a high-sound- 
ing name for confusion if its processes are not 
instinct with intelligence, and guided at every point 
by a pervading reason and a controlling purpose. 

Nor is all this true only in the lower regions of 
inorganic matter. Life itself, that stubborn conun- 
drum of human wisdom, is richer and nobler only 
because it is more replete with the complex beau- 
ties of an ever-present intelligence. In the mar- 
velous spheres of vital phenomena, organs and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 139 

functions answer to each other as the voice of 
prophecy is answered by its event, as the cry of a 
need by its satisfaction, or as the meaning of a pur- 
pose by its realization; all in mutual harmony 
within a little system complete in itself and yet con- 
stituting only a fragmentary and integral part of 
the larger and nobler macrocosm which is itself the 
consummate expression of that one supreme unfold- 
ing purpose for the fulfillment of which the dynamic 
word of creative power spoke all the worlds into 
being. 

Now, if all this is true, it is yet more true when 
we ascend to the purer realms of free moral and 
responsible being. And here too, not less than on 
lower levels, we find men everywhere striving to 
thread the mazes in search of some informing prin- 
ciple and plan. The history of man, in its magnifi- 
cent perspective, meets the inquiring mind at every 
point with unmistakable evidences of a designing 
mind which controls the forces and shapes the out- 
lines of the whole. A Palestine or a Rome in his- 
tory stands out, like a mountain against the sky, as 
the embodiment of some one idea. Every fact has 
its meaning ; every nation teaches its lesson ; every 
age bears its own prophetic burden. Every king or 
sage or hero or saint whose name has withstood 
oblivion is a messenger to the twentieth century, 
charged with his own special message. Hegel saw 
everywhere in human history a clear-cut, logical 
development of pure reason ; the page of the past is 



140 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

but a transcript of one progressively unfolding 
idea ; and although our eyes may lack the keenness 
of the Hegelian vision, yet even to us it must be 
clear that the history of man can be known at all 
only in so far as in some sense it is the out-working 
of an intelligible idea, the development of a know- 
able plan. It lies as a sleeping postulate in the 
background of our thought in all our study of 
man's history that in the rise and fall of empires, 
in the ups and downs of dynasties, in the genera- 
tions and degenerations and regenerations of races 
and customs and philosophies and religions, not less 
than in the making of a star or the cooling of 
a satellite, not less than in the forming of a fog- 
bank or the tinting of a rosebud, the forces which 
are at work are ever doing the bidding of intelli- 
gence ; they are in their orderly and appointed suc- 
cessions contributing their parts to the final con- 
summation of the one grand underlying and over- 
arching plan. This is the " one increasing purpose " 
running through the ages ; and men's minds are 
widened as they catch glimpses of its vast scope 
and rise to the mighty majesty of its meaning. 

All this is not mere philosophy, though it is 
soundest philosophy; it is not science merely, 
although there can be no science without it. It is 
essentially a deep spiritual reflection, a devout 
religious attitude. It lies at the very foundation of 
an intelligent faith in God, and, under God, in man 
and the world and the course of things. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 141 

This great truth, many-sided and far-reaching as 
it is, the franchise of religions, the foundation of 
theologies, the very possibility of a graciously self- 
revealing God, is not the exclusive possession of 
any one school or creed. It is broader than any 
system, it is larger than any sect. But it has been 
the peculiar glory of the Keformed Churches in the 
history of Protestantism that, in the providence of 
God, they have made this mighty truth the deepest 
foundation of their Christian faith. They have 
reverently compared revealed truth with the wisest 
thought of the human mind, and they have found 
them testifying in harmony that the only key which 
will fit the problems of world-history is in the single 
truth that God rules. " The Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth." They have emphasized the divine in 
the past, the divine in the outward processes of the 
world, the divine in the path and in the heart of 
man. They have seen God in all his works ; they 
have sought his stately steppings or seen his silent 
footsteps everywhere; they have found neither 
heaven nor earth untenanted of their God; and 
they have had the confidence to believe that 
wherever their sluggish perceptions have failed to 
detect with satisfying clearness the presence of the 
divine, still " behind the dim unknown " God has 
always stood " within the shadows, keeping watch 
above his own." 

Men have called this fatalism, but, unscared by 
names, the Eeformed Churches have only pressed 



142 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

their faith more closely to their hearts. Men have 
called it pantheism, but, with all the calumnies and 
caricatures of their faith, they have all the more 
stoutly maintained that although man is free, yes, 
because man is free, God rules. They have been 
taunted with the suggestion that it is but the reign 
of Fate or Law or Necessity which they acknowl- 
edge, but they have ever answered back that 
eternal principles are not less true because pagan 
creeds have honored them, nor are they less vital 
because savage bosoms have held them sacred ; and 
they have insisted that because men's minds, in 
darker days and under cloudier skies, have failed to 
apprehend the personality of the power that gov- 
erns all, therefore we must not, in our greater light 
and wisdom, declare that the world must go un- 
governed. Men have pointed in tones of skepticism 
to the habitations of cruelty, they have sung plain- 
tive dirges over man's inhumanity to man, they have 
painted none too deep and dark the pictures of 
rivalry and strife and suffering and death, they 
have uncovered the bottomless pit, and, with the 
genius of a Dore or a Dante, have depicted the 
haunted abodes of the hopelessly lost, they have 
ventured to the very verge of that blackest of 
mysteries in the great round universe of thought — 
the fact of sin in the world of a holy God — still, as 
they have thrust this awful picture of night and 
crimson and lurid flame athwart the peaceful back- 
ground of an eternal God who is infinite in holiness 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 143 

and wisdom and power and love, in spite of all 
their challenges and in the teeth of all their scorn, 
they have dared to insist that notwithstanding all, 
behind it all and above it all, "The Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth." To let go this one truth is 
to lose anchor and to drift out farther and farther 
upon a stormy, angry, shoreless sea. We believe that 
God rules because there is nothing else to believe. 
If God does not govern this world then there is no 
government and there is no world-ruler, no world- 
purpose, no world-history. If because men are free 
they can outlaw themselves from God's rule, or, if 
because they are free they can outlaw God from 
their rule, then every man is himself a god, en- 
throned in the closed circuit of his own petty little 
world. This is to make gods as cheap as men ; it is 
to make history a pantheon of human deities swarm- 
ing with gods like the classic mountains of ancient 
Greece ; it is to rob the world of its one living and 
true God for the myriads of contemptible little 
idols of flesh and blood, each supreme in his own 
self-centered, self-bound sphere. Every man's will 
is absolute; every man's arm is almighty; every 
man's seat is a throne, and against his sovereign 
sway the scepter of high heaven falls to pieces and 
the eternal throne crumbles into dust. This is 
chaos, not cosmos ; this is to make the world not a 
pantheon but a pandemonium, subject to the blind 
rule of the mad mob ; this is polytheism, not God 
the Father Almighty ; this is madness, not reason — 



144 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

the madness of ignoring God, the folly of deifying 
self into the glory of the divine. 

This great truth is a fundamental element, if it 
be not a differentiating principle in what modern 
history has been pleased to name Calvinism. "We 
are not solicitous about names ; we have no quarrel 
with our sensitive neighbor who laments that the 
truth of God has been christened in the name of 
weak and mortal man. We hold no brief for the 
estate or for the fame of the Eeformer of Geneva. 
However, that man has not read history wisely or 
well who hastens to apologize overmuch for the 
venerable framers of this God-given faith. Such a 
faith as this is neither better nor worse because 
John Calvin taught it ; it is neither truer nor falser 
because good men or bad men have linked their 
names in history with it. Do men talk of the 
passing of this faith in these times of wide outlook 
and high attainment ? Let them talk rather of its 
passing on and over into the twentieth century 
with more generous recognition and with maturer 
and more potent influence as men's thoughts ex- 
pand. The essential truth of this germinal idea 
that there is one great purpose unfolding itself in 
the progress of time, that this purpose was con- 
ceived in the eternal counsels of the ever-living 
God, that it comprehends within its compass " what- 
soever comes to pass," — from the falling of an 
autumn leaf to the falling of an archangel or of an 
empire, from the fate of a Marathon or a Waterloo 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 145 

to the feeble cry of an infant in the night — that in 
all its clashing and conflicting elements and in all 
its mighty and marvelous manifestations, it is ever 
and everywhere the steady, strong, self -harmonious 
development of that one single unchanging purpose, 
having its worthy aim in the more glorious reveal- 
ings of its divine author, and its only worthy inter- 
pretation in the faith that sees the invisible, — this 
sublime truth is for no one age or country ; it is for 
every thoughtful son of Adam who would fain 
catch rational glimpses of the vast kaleidoscopic 
panorama in the midst of which he himself has 
somehow been flung into his place, and in which, 
willing or unwilling, he is bound to play his little 
part. No name in history is so great as to add lus- 
ter to this mighty truth of God ; and no name in 
history is so illustrious but gains greater glory from 
being linked forever with it. 

If this is what the world means by generic Cal- 
vinism, then the least that we can say is that Cal- 
vinism is a self-consistent, theistic rationale of the 
world-history upon which men are so intent to-day. 
It sees difficulties, but it focuses them in the one 
deep dark spot in all our seeing. It subordinates 
smaller truths to larger ones ; it insists that second- 
cause contingencies and human free-agency must 
take their place somehow and somewhere within 
the scope of the greater truth that a supreme pur- 
pose — ever wise, ever loving and ever good — directs 
and controls and governs all. It pleads guilty of 
10 



146 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

offending the man who sneers at the logical stand- 
ards of sound thinking, and it is a persistent stum- 
bling-block to all tender souls who regard self-con- 
sistency as presumptive evidence that a system of 
thought is a system of error. 

The last and largest word of sound philosophy is 
Personality ; the Eeformed faith seizes upon that 
word and devoutly pronounces it God. The last 
word of sound empirical science is Force ; but we 
remember that force is only another name for Will, 
and Will banks up into Personality again ; and, ac- 
cordingly, the God of rational science is the Living 
and True God. If men tell us that selection is a 
ruling law in nature, we remind them that selec- 
tion, insulated from personality, is false philosophy 
and false science. A personal power is behind and 
within every process in nature, and, accordingly, the 
natural selection of science is transformed, in the 
illuminating presence of the ultimate personality, 
into the personal election of our Calvinistic faith. 
Every line in the cosmos leads back to God, but a 
God who does not control the world which he has 
made is but the puppet of the forces which hedge 
him in and hold him down. An atheistic world is 
a scientific contradiction ; an atheistic universe 
would turn sane philosophy into the mad ravings 
of a disordered brain. But our faith must give 
God room and time to work out his eternal purpose. 
His divine plan spans the immeasurable spaces be- 
tween the morning chorus of the new-made stars 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 147 

and the angelic annunciation that time shall be no 
more. Our faith refuses to surrender what it can- 
not comprehend ; it scans the chasms which it can- 
not bridge ; it refers a thousand little mysteries to 
the one great mother mystery, and it traces every 
clue back to the changeless purpose of a personal, 
spiritual God whom the little child lisping its 
prayer at its mother's knee can truly know, and yet 
who is so great and glorious that to the wisest of 
the sages his " judgments are unsearchable and his 
ways past finding out." 

Possibly it had been well if such a divine phi- 
losophy could have been unscarred by calumny and 
undogged by violence, but alas, for the thorny path 
of truth! But, whether openly assaulted or se- 
cretly betrayed, it lives on perennial as the very 
truth of God. The slanders it has survived and the 
battles it has fought would have buried it fathoms 
deep had it been only the vain conceit of man. 
When men tell us that with the frigid touch of 
fatalism it dishonors man and assassinates human 
freedom, we quietly point to the page of history 
for its testimony. The fair blessings of liberty 
have ever chosen for their most congenial home 
those favored climes where God alone is worshiped 
as supreme. If we are told that the stiff logic of 
our faith would crown cruelty and enthrone despot- 
ism, we call the writers of history again to witness, 
and we wait only long enough to hear our own 
American Bancroft say, " The fanatic for Calvinism 



148 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

is the fanatic for liberty." We point to the moun- 
tain fastnesses of Switzerland, the cradle of consti- 
tutional free government in Europe, and we re- 
member that this God-honoring faith was rocked in 
that same Alpine cradle. "Where shall we go to 
find richer blood and truer mettle than the Hugue- 
nots of France, persecuted at home but warmly 
welcomed abroad, have contributed to the free 
achievements of modern history ? Holland is small 
on the map, like Palestine of old, but Holland has 
been for ages the fruitful soil of the Eeformed faith 
and to-day, with her fair young Presbyterian queen, 
Holland may proudly inquire whether modern civ- 
ilization, minus the Dutch character and stability 
and love of liberty, would not have scored an en- 
tirely different record. Scotland, the home of 
Knox and Henderson and Chalmers and Living- 
stone, Scotland, the land of the thistle and of the 
heather, with its rugged fog-capped cliffs and its 
barren historic moors, scarred by many a conflict 
and furrowed by many a plowshare, dear, grand old 
Scotland, with all her open faults and candid follies, 
has hugged to her warm old heart this rugged faith 
of her fathers, and Scotland has long been the pro- 
lific motherland of great men and great thoughts 
and great things that have blessed the world and 
enriched the treasures of mankind. And what in- 
telligent man or woman is there who has failed to 
observe how many of the great Englishmen of his- 
tory and of the present day are Scotchmen, and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 149 

moreover, how many of these great Scotchmen 
are Scotch-Irish men? But every hill and valley 
from which this hardy Presbyterian race sprang, 
swept by fire and sprinkled with crimson, has been 
consecrated to the doctrines of the Westminster 
Shorter Catechism and to the principles of human 
liberty. 

" The sun that rose on freedom rose on blood." 

This one creed is the mother of creeds. The 
plan of God is the hope of man. Optimism is a 
vagabond in any land in which men have thrown 
aside a deep and abiding faith in the sovereign pur- 
pose of the God of nations and of men. It is no 
cruel and capricious despot before whose heartless 
sway we fall with sullen hate and reluctant fear. 
The sovereign God before whom we bow in loving 
reverence is no Moloch of brute force, raised to the 
infinite degree. Our God is no magnified Augustus 
or Napoleon. He is a God of infinite wisdom and 
he is sovereign in his wisdom. He is a God of infi- 
nite glory and he is sovereign in his glory. He is 
a God of infinite love and he is sovereign in his 
love. He is the All-Father, but he is a sovereign 
Father ; he is the All-Euler, but he is a Father in 
his rule. We do not undeify God by robbing him 
of every attribute but that of infinite power, and 
no more would we dethrone him by ascribing to 
him all the other attributes of the Godhead while 
yet we withhold from him the scepter of his right- 



150 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

eousness and paralyze his right arm against the 
doing of his own holy will. 

The little ant, moved by an instinct that is God- 
given, toils on diligently while the summer sky is 
bright, and, although it does not understand the full 
meaning of its task, a wisdom far greater than its 
own is working toward its high end. The race of 
mankind, a toiling, seething, surging, struggling 
race, goes on century by century, bending toward a 
goal which the lowly toilers can neither clearly see 
nor wholly know. Each plays his own part ; each 
does his own work; his hand is busied with his 
own task and his mind is largely absorbed in his 
own lot. But the humble worker knows that not 
only beyond the clouds but here and there and 
everywhere, the will of God is immanent and over 
all supreme. His eternal purpose is slowly taking 
form in time as it marches on toward that 

" One far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

There may be noonday brightness or the darkness 
of the midnight gloom ; there may be the angry 
fury of the storm or the peaceful beauty of the sun 
at the hour of his rising or of his setting ; there may 
be the groan of defeat and the dirge of sorrow, or 
there may be the shout of triumph and the song of 
hope ; but there is always strength for the toiler, 
there is always courage for the fighter, there is 
always a song for the sufferer in knowing that in 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 151 

the final reckoning that is sure to come, the eternal 
thought will be gloriously expressed, the divine pur- 
pose will be gloriously realized. 

The tides of time will come surging back to the 
foot of the throne whence when time began they 
issued forth. He who is the Alpha and Omega, the 
Beginning and the End, the First and the Last, shall 
speak the word and the great volume of time will 
be closed and sealed forever. He who is the same 
yesterday and to-day and forever is before and after 
and within every force, every fact, every moment, 
every movement, and every issue. All things are 
by him ; all things are for him ; all things are unto 
him and " in him all things consist." 

This is the philosophy of the truly wise ; this is 
the confidence of the true saint of God ; this is the 
assurance of God's holy word. This is the precious 
truth we celebrate to-day, standing on the threshold 
of a new century and peering into its stormy pros- 
pects and uncertain issues, with a tempered courage 
and a not unclouded vision, and yet with an ab- 
solutely unwavering trust in the Lord God of 
Israel. This is the faith for which our fathers 
stood, and, by the blessing of a covenant-keeping 
Jehovah, it is the faith in which our children and 
our children's children shall loyally and lovingly 
stand. 



PROBLEMS OF THE TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 



BY THE 

REV. GEORGE TYBOUT PURVES, D. D., LL. D. 



PROBLEMS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

BY THE 

EEV. GEORGE TYBOUT PUEVES, D. D., LL. D. 



By " the problems of the twentieth century " I 
understand those which present themselves to the 
Church at the beginning of the new age. I shall 
not confine myself however to those which are 
peculiar to Presbyterianism, but rather attempt a 
survey of those which we face in common with 
other evangelical branches of the Church of Christ. 
I assume that we desire to grapple with the largest 
questions; that we are most interested in the 
problems which address themselves to Christian 
men everywhere; that we believe that we shall 
best meet the problems of our own Church's life by 
doing our share in the solution of those which con- 
front Christianity itself. 

The Christian Church has entered the new cen- 
tury with her banners flying and her regimental 
hosts in marching order. The past century has in- 
deed been one of struggle against foes without and 
within. But God has wonderfully upheld his truth 
and blessed it to mankind. Never was Christianity 
so strong a force in the world as she is to-day. 

155 



156 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Never has she had so many reasons for hope of the 
promised and approaching victory. Yet the prob- 
lems immediately before her are many and serious. 
We are not prophets. We cannot see far into the 
century. We do not know what change in the 
horizon even a decade may witness. It is enough 
if we look at the immediate future and scan the 
situation as it lies directly before us. There are 
four problems or classes of problems to which, as 
the most conspicuous, I invite your attention. 

First, the intellectual problem as it presents it- 
self to Christian faith, the problem of pure theology. 
This of course must be the fundamental one, and it 
will appear so especially to Presbyterians since our 
type of Christianity has been prevailingly intellec- 
tual. We have been accustomed to regard Chris- 
tianity as a real interpretation of life and of the 
universe. As such it addresses itself to the in- 
telligence. We have never considered it as merely 
the expression of religious sentiment nor as simple 
ethics. We have always believed that sentiment 
and morality must have their foundation in a view 
of the relation of God and the world which the in- 
telligence apprehends as true, and that in conse- 
quence an attack upon the intellectual ideas which 
Christianity assumes or inculcates is the most 
dangerous, because the most fundamental, of all. 
The intellectual problems which confront the faith 
are therefore those which demand the closest 
scrutiny. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 157 

Yet at the very outset we find ourselves forced to 
meet the query, raised by modern cultivated 
thought, whether there is, properly speaking, an 
intellectual side to religion ; whether the intellectual 
ideas upon which we have been accustomed to base 
Christian sentiment and duty have real and per- 
manent validity. This is indeed the first phase of 
the religious problem of the day. Can we justify 
at the bar of culture the affirmations of our religion 
concerning God and his relation to the world? 
Can we justify the right of any religious authority, 
be it Christ or apostle, council or consciousness of 
the Church, to make such affirmations ? Keligion, 
we are told, is a matter of the heart and of con- 
duct. As for Christianity, it is the moral influence 
upon men of the impressive personality of Jesus. 
The intellectual ideas through the medium of which 
his influence has acted and in which it has clothed 
itself are but temporary forms of thought, natural 
to the several epochs in which they have originated 
but not fitted to continue. In fact they have never 
been an essential part of the gospel. They have no 
right to claim permanent authority. For the 
human mind cannot know God adequately. It is 
shut up within the limits of the finite. It can only 
form for itself more or less imperfect images of 
divine things. These have for their age religious 
value as instruments to be used for a while by the 
pious heart in the expression of its sentiment and 
as a guide to conduct. But religion does not in 



158 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

reality or rightfully have an intellectual side ; and 
all doctrine can be regarded only as of historical 
interest and relative importance. 

It should be remembered also that this conten- 
tion is made in the supposed interest of religion 
itself. Herein lies the peculiarity of the problem 
as now presented. The necessity of religion is 
universally admitted, and it is hoped to save it from 
the assaults of philosophy and science by separating 
their spheres. Philosophy, science, and historical 
criticism, may pursue their way, it is said, without 
hindrance from religion. The first may be agnostic 
or even pantheistic ; the second may be purely nat- 
uralistic ; the third may resolve the Bible and 
dogma into human constructions. But, we are told, 
they cannot injure religion, which has nothing to 
do with these intellectual processes. It will still 
retain its original power, provided it confess its 
limitations and content itself with the sphere of 
pious sentiment toward its thought of God and of 
love toward man. 

Herein I say lies the first phase of the intellectual 
problem with which culture confronts Christianity. 
It evidently strikes at the roots of the question of 
what religion is. Can we admit the proposed 
solution? The theology of the twentieth century 
will turn upon the answer. Now I maintain that 
we cannot admit it, and, in brief, for two reasons. 
The one is because it is impossible to eliminate the 
intellectual element from the teaching of Christ 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 159 

and his apostles without reducing them to the 
limitations of fallible men. They have given us 
doctrines about God and his relation to the world, 
about guilt and sin, atonement and the future, 
which enter into the very fabric of their instruction. 
These cannot be denied as either untrue or un- 
essential without denying the infallibility of the 
founders of our religion ; and, be it noted, the 
difficulty applies and the principle is in fact to-day 
applied, just as vigorously and just as logically to 
Jesus as to his apostles. The other reason is that 
the attempt to separate the religious and the intel- 
lectual sides of the human mind is, if it be possible, 
suicidal. The mind cannot .build its sentiment on 
ideas which it knows to be untrue, or govern con- 
duct by beliefs which it disbelieves. It cannot be 
permanently determined by what it affirms to be 
irrational. If divine things be unknowable, it can- 
not continue to reverence them as if they were 
known. It cannot give religious value to ideas 
which the reason declares to be of no value. Ee- 
ligion is either rational or it is an error. It cannot 
continue to sit on the limb of a tree which it has 
sawed off from the trunk. No ! The intellectual 
side of religion is real. It has a right and a duty 
to furnish an interpretation of life and the universe 
to the intelligence of man. Dogma has a place in 
its consciousness. It must meet the culture of the 
new age not by shrinking back into a shell while 
the battle between truth and error is fought by 



160 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

other weapons, but rather, as in the centuries past, 
by entering courageously into the fray and main- 
taining the truth of the great intellectual ideas 
for which it has stood ; by making them clearer in 
statement and more convincing in argument; by 
asserting the rationality and the truth of its 
affirmations concerning God, and man, the nature 
of the former and the salvation of the latter ; and 
thus interpreting to man's intelligence the basis of 
piety and of duty. 

But, if there be an intellectual problem before 
religion, what is the particular form which it has 
taken; what is really the fundamental question 
which lies before Christian faith at the opening of 
the new century ? The nineteenth century has wit- 
nessed a steady convergence of discussion toward 
the basal questions which lie at the very root of re- 
ligion. The older debates were occupied with the 
inquiry whether the doctrines of historical Chris- 
tianity are supported by Scripture ; and, in the judg- 
ment of most, it appeared that they are. Then the 
debate changed into an inquiry concerning the au- 
thority of Scripture, and from that, still more deeply, 
into the question of the seat of authority in re- 
ligion. Meanwhile a new emphasis has been placed 
upon the ethical element in religion, leading not 
only to a disparagement of dogma but to a reinter- 
pretation by many thinkers of the older doctrines 
in the interest of their ethical content. Then the 
century has witnessed the rise and prevalence of 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 161 

the philosophy of evolution, applied first to the 
world of nature and then to the history of man. 
"We should not doubt that in these movements of 
thought valuable and permanent ideas have been 
discovered. It has been a century of great progress 
in religious thought. Historical criticism has illu- 
minated the progress of revelation in Scripture. 
The ethical interpretation of dogma has delivered 
us from a barren scholasticism. The truth in evo- 
lution has opened to us the historic movement of 
the race. The conflict with error has brought old 
truth to new emphasis and new truth to expression. 
I am simply pointing out that the result has been 
to bring us face to face with fundamental problems 
and that the one now most pressing, as Christianity 
confronts modern culture, is that of the definition 
and the demonstration of "the supernatural" in 
history. Can we maintain it? How shall we 
define it? Is God transcendent over the world 
and superior to finite forces ; or is he only imma- 
nent in them? Is "the supernatural " merely 
another name for "providence" or does it mean 
that, besides God's providential guidance of the 
world he has interfered to manifest himself im- 
mediately to men? This question underlies all 
religion and theology and criticism. Has God 
given an immediate revelation of his mind and 
will ? Was the advent of Jesus a real incarnation 
of the divine Son ? Is the human soul really born 
again by an immediate exercise of divine power ? 
ll 



162 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Or is the Bible the providentially guided driftwood 
of Hebrew literature ; and the person of Christ 
either an insoluble enigma or purely human ; and 
is Christian experience simply the result of the 
moral influence of the Eabbi of Nazareth? This 
is beyond doubt the intellectual problem to which 
the Christianity of the twentieth century must give 
its answer; and because it underlies all questions 
of criticism and theology, it behooves us to face it 
calmly and honestly, and to weigh the importance 
of minor questions in view of their relation to it. 
I am here to state, rather than to argue, the prob- 
lems of the new century. But I may be permitted 
to point out that the contribution which Keformed 
theology has to make in the solution of this prob- 
lem lies in the fearless maintenance of its doctrine 
of God. That doctrine is the center of the Be- 
formed system. It is, we believe, the completest 
statement of the biblical revelation. The Bible is 
emphatically the revelation of God as well as a 
revelation from God. It is the unveiling of the 
mighty Jehovah culminating in the person and 
teaching of Jesus. "No man hath seen God at 
any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the 
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Cal- 
vinism has taken that point of view. God is the 
ultimate fact, and a complete system of religious 
teaching must proceed from him as the fundamental 
truth. So Calvinism has organized its system 
around the revealed doctrine of God. It has rec- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 163 

ognized in him not only the absolute Author of the 
world but its sovereign Kuler, in accordance with 
the purposes and government of whom all things 
proceed. It has not failed to recognize his moral 
attributes but it has first recognized his sovereignty, 
self-sufficiency, independence, and authority. It has 
found in his will the only safe resting place in the 
effort to explain the reason of things. It does not 
fail to perceive his immanence in nature and life ; 
but it posits first his transcendence. It may be 
that it has not sufficiently emphasized his love 
toward the human race, though in its declaration 
of his infinite grace, it has embodied most pro- 
foundly the reality of that love. But it has com- 
pletely expressed the truth of his relation to the 
world, — in accordance with his self-revelation in 
Christ, — so that with this conception of God fully 
maintained the supernatural in history is made to 
rest on an indestructible basis. So long as we hold 
to this idea of God in its integrity, the citadel of 
supernatural religion is safe. To defend this basal 
truth would seem to be our particular glory in the 
intellectual battle concerning religion which is 
closing in upon us. We shall not help to solve 
this problem of the twentieth century if in any 
degree we abate our testimony to the reality of that 
living God, who " hath all life, glory, goodness, 
blessedness in and of himself, is alone in and unto 
himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any 
creatures which he hath made, . . . but only 



164 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

manifesting his own glory in, by, unto and upon 
them ; is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, 
through whom and to whom are all things, and 
hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by 
them, for them and upon them, whatsoever himself 
pleaseth." This doctrine is the permanent safe- 
guard of supernatural Christianity. It is the only 
breakwater within which supernaturalism can live 
in security. It answers all objections to revelation, 
miracles, the Incarnation and regeneration. It is, 
I affirm, our special task to meet on this basis the 
intellectual doubt of the coming century. 

2. Turning to another direction, the Christian 
Church is face to face with a social problem. We 
are compelled to ask anew what is the relation of 
Christianity to the social progress of mankind? 
How can it best make its contribution in this sphere 
to the life of the world ; and especially how can 
organized Christianity, or the Church, fulfill its 
mission in the Spirit of Jesus to society ? 

It is true that this problem has always been pres- 
ent, but it is now felt as never before; and the 
challenge has been given in no uncertain tones for 
the Church to prove itself the Saviour of society. 
This social problem has in fact become the most 
pressing one of the modern world. Humanity as a 
whole has become conscious of its rights and of its 
wrongs. The individualism which characterized 
the rising democracy of a century ago has in great 
measure been replaced by the social consciousness ; 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 165 

that is to say, by the idea that every factor, be it 
the individual or be it an institution, is under obli- 
gation to contribute to the well-being of the social 
organism, so that all may share in the benefit. Ee- 
construction of these relations in the political, 
economic and industrial spheres is certainly going 
on with great rapidity. The movement is chang- 
ing the face of society and, with many blunders, yet 
on the whole with steady progress, is lifting it to a 
higher plane and to a fairer recognition of the 
rights and duties of man to man. In this condition 
of affairs, the Church cannot but have the liveliest 
interest. She cannot help inquiring what phase of 
duty and opportunity the situation brings before 
her. 

There are also certain concrete facts which call 
for the most serious consideration of Christian men. 
It is sad to note the alienation of many from the 
Church, on the ground that she is not in hearty 
sympathy with humanity in its struggle for social 
betterment. We are told that she would better 
give heed to the present needs of men than confine 
her attention to their future life ; that she is too 
often on the side of the rich and strong instead of 
the poor and oppressed ; that she is out of touch 
with the life of the common people. The social 
restlessness of the age has also produced an antipa- 
thy to all authority, and hence to the authority of 
religion and to the grounds on which it claims to 
rest. There is further a widespread tendency to 



166 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

substitute social improvement on earth for the 
salvation of the souls of men, sociology for theol- 
ogy ; the culture of the physical and intellectual 
life for the spiritual. These facts constitute a 
problem with which we have to deal. At the same 
time never has Christ been so loudly praised ; never 
has the necessity of some religion been so widely 
acknowledged. What shall we do in view of these 
serious questions which we cannot escape ? 

So far as Christianity itself is concerned, there 
ought to be no question from her history that she 
is a mighty force for social progress. In every age 
and land she has wrought for freedom and right- 
eousness, for the physical and intellectual, the polit- 
ical and industrial improvement of life, as well as 
for the salvation of souls. She has entered into the 
social organism like the leaven into the meal. The 
process has been slow and long, with much to over- 
come, both in her adherents and in her foes. But 
she changed the civilization of the ancient world 
and made the new. She has ever acted however by 
the silent creation of public sentiment ; by the 
awakening of leaders of progress to the needs of 
men and giving them courage to proclaim their 
ideas ; by the quiet pervasion of the organism with 
more of her spirit. She will continue to do the 
same. In the words of Dr. Bruce, "Christianity 
has merely begun its workings in the world." Yet 
if the operations of this mighty leaven have been 
already so vast as history proves them to have 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 167 

been, we may be sure that she will yet more 
effectually make her beneficent influence felt in the 
solving of the social problems of the new age. 

The serious question however is, what should the 
organized Protestant Churches do in the situation 
which immediately confronts them ? I venture to 
state a few guiding principles. 

They must not abandon the effort to reach society 
through the individual. They must not aim to 
operate through legislation so much as through the 
creation of opinion. They must not forget that the 
transformation of individual character through the 
power of the gospel has been and alone can be the 
abiding secret of the transformation of the whole 
physical and social life of man. No dream of so- 
cial organization must lead them away from the 
fundamental work of saving the body by first sav- 
ing the soul, of saving society by first saving the 
individual. 

But on the other hand they must cultivate more 
sympathy with the present needs of men. They 
must take pains to see that the charge of selfishness 
and exclusiveness is not true. They must correct 
not a few abuses which have crept into their prac- 
tical operations. 

To this end they must multiply agencies of every 
kind in order to minister to men. They must ex- 
press in practical forms the adaptation of their 
message to every class and to every need. They 
are doing this, but they must do it more intensely 



168 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

and abundantly. And then their preaching must 
be a faithful application of duty to every man, 
whether rich or poor, in straight, plain language ; 
in the tongue of the unlearned ; the pressing not 
only the salvation which is in Christ on the accept- 
ance of all, but the duties in Christ toward God 
and men on the consciences of all. This, too, the 
Church is doing, thank God, as never before. I 
am not disposed to look on the social problem as 
wholly dark. It is being, I am persuaded, slowly 
and surely solved. It presents itself in its most 
acute form in our large cities. We only need to 
feel it. We must believe that the gospel of Christ 
contains its solution, — that it has in it the promise 
and power of every form of life. We must carry 
it, with all its attendant benefits to soul and body, 
to every class ; and by the persistent love of men 
which we have learned of Jesus set the leaven free 
to work in the world which unquestionably feels 
the need of it. 

3. Still again; within the circle of organized 
Christianity, there is the urgent problem of cooper- 
ation, if not of union, among the several branches 
of the Evangelical Church. 

The longing for some measure at least of the re- 
union of Christendom is very strong and wide- 
spread. It has become one of the movements of 
the age. Many of the causes of division among 
the Churches belong to the past and are felt to be 
no longer in force. Others are now seen to have 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 169 

been from the beginning insufficient and born of 
narrow views of truth and duty. There is evident 
a needless waste of power in the work of taking 
the gospel to the world. Often there exists un- 
happy rivalry. The multitudes in even our own 
land who need the ministration of the Church are 
so many that distribution of service is loudly called 
for ; while in the vaster multitudes of the heathen 
world there is still larger room for division of func- 
tion and union of effort. The inquiry comes from 
many lips, Shall not the new century witness some 
steps at least toward the outward expression of 
that unity of the Spirit in Christ which has been 
making itself more and more deeply felt in the 
breasts of millions of his followers ? 

There is certainly much to be said in the 
consideration of this problem and on both sides 
of it. 

There would certainly seem to be every reason 
for the gradual reunion of the various branches of 
the leading types of Protestant Christianity. The 
subdivisions at least may be merged into the divi- 
sions in their respective countries. Why should not 
all Presbyterians in this land come into actual 
union ; and all Methodists ; and all Lutherans ? 
May we not with reason hope that this century will 
witness such a measure of reunion ? 

And there is certainly a call for a fairer and 
broader application of the principle of cooperation 
in Christian work at home and abroad, even where 



170 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

there may not be organic union. Why should we 
not have " spheres of influence " in Church activity ; 
and this not in the interest of selfish advancement, 
but for the glory of the common Lord ? 

And of course there must be the full recognition 
of the Christian character of all other Churches who 
worship the divine Christ and proclaim him as the 
Saviour of mankind. 

Yet there exist certain obvious limitations to the 
application of these aims and hopes. Union may 
never be consummated at the expense of essen- 
tial truth. The problem is how much truth is 
essential; and that is just the question which 
the century will work out. But union will 
be worth nothing, if it be not the genuine ex- 
pression of substantial accord in belief and life. 
Therefore we must move slowly. The practical 
question will be how and when to act. Every 
honest controversy will help to settle the question. 
Every performance also of our duty to the world 
will aid in a like way. As we all grow nearer to 
Christ, we shall grow nearer to one another. We 
may look to the future with the expectation that 
the common consciousness of Christendom will be- 
come more filled with his truth and spirit, and will 
therefore more freely and fully combine into one- 
ness of form. We hail the prospect ! It will fulfill 
the apostle's prediction and the Saviour's prayer. 
We may cherish the hope that the new century 
will see some advance toward the ideal when we 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 171 

shall be outwardly as well as inwardly one in 
Christ Jesus. 

4. In the last place, yet on the practical side 
perhaps most pressing of all, there confronts the 
Church the problem of missions, — of the world's 
evangelization. I will do no more than mention it, 
because you are to be addressed on this subject by 
one who has made it his specialty. It is enough 
for me to say that the problem is not whether we 
shall be a missionary Church, nor how missions 
should be conducted ; but how can the Church be 
aroused to a realization of the opportunity, the im- 
mensity, and the solemn duty, of the cause. The 
success already won by the blessing of God, has 
only made the task appear the more compli- 
cated. Its immensity appears appalling. The re- 
vivals of heathenism make it more difficult. The 
evils of civilization, which often accompany Chris- 
tianity, hinder the advance of the latter. Political 
complications are inevitable and full of peril. But 
there can be no doubt that the Spirit of Jesus is 
leading his militant hosts, and that the kingdoms of 
the world will become his. The chief problem, I 
say, is to arouse the Churches to the conviction of 
duty and to an adequate expenditure of men and 
money. We have not yet taken the work up with 
the zeal and devotion for which it calls. Enthusi- 
asm must give way to permanent conviction; spas- 
modic efforts to systematic consecration. The 
whole Church and every individual must take part 



172 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

in the task. What may we not expect in the next 
century, if the ratio of advance attained in the past 
one be continued ? God help us to solve the prob- 
lem ; to keep the great commission in the front ; — 
and to hasten the conquest of the world by the 
only true religion in the name of the only Saviour 
of mankind. 

Such appear to be the chief classes of problems 
with which we are confronted at the opening of 
the new century, — the intellectual, the social, the 
ecclesiastical and the missionary. Let us meet 
them with calm faith and confident hope. They 
are not more serious than those which the past has 
faced. They will be solved just in proportion as 
the Church imbibes the Spirit of Jesus and fills 
herself with the Master's mind. They will be met 
successfully less by human wisdom than by the wis- 
dom of God working through us ; and this will follow 
if the Church brings every thought into captivity 
unto the obedience of Christ. For he is the solvent 
of all problems. He is the wisdom and the power of 
God. The brightest and most inspiring of all facts 
in the present situation is that Christ is being more 
glorified, more studied, better understood, than ever 
before. Nearer to him are all the Churches ad- 
vancing ; and as he fills our minds and lives, the 
day will be hastened when at his feet every knee 
shall bow and every tongue shall confess that he is 
Lord. When his reign is perfected in us, the prob- 
lems of all the centuries will be solved. The intel- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 173 

lect and the social life of man will embody his 
truth and law; the Church and the world alike 
will own his sway. Believing in him we may face 
the future without a doubt ; for as surely as God is 
true will the kingdoms of this world become the 
kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. 



THE SPEEDY BRINGING OF THE 
WORLD TO CHRIST 



BY 

ME. ROBERT E. SPEER 



THE SPEEDY BRINGING OF THE WORLD 
TO CHRIST 

BY 

MR. ROBERT E. SPEER 



The problem of the salvation of the world is a 
problem in the will of God. It is the will of God 
that it should not remain so, but that two other 
wills should be introduced to joint responsibility and 
privilege ; — the will of the Church, to which the 
gospel has already come, and the will of the world, 
to which the gospel is yet to go. Midway between 
the will of the loving God desiring to save the 
world, and the will of the world needing to be 
saved, stand the men of the Church who hold in 
trust the gospel of God given for the salvation of 
the world. The agency at the disposal of these men 
in swaying the will of God is prayer. The agency 
at their disposal in molding the will of the world 
is the preaching of Jesus Christ. Powerful as is 
the ministry of prayer in this and in all the activi- 
ties of the Church when rightly used, it is both a 
futility and a hypocrisy unless coupled with an 
effort proportionate to the love of God, the 

12 177 



178 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Church's duty, and the world's need, to take to 
the world which is in ignorance of the gospel, the 
knowledge of its only hope and life. For us, 
accordingly, the problem of the salvation of the 
world reduces itself to the problem of the prayerful 
effort speedily to take Jesus Christ to the world. 

But can we take him speedily? It might be 
answered that the question is an irrelevant one. A 
Church that has always refused to condition re- 
sponsibility for action upon ability to act when 
speaking to the unregenerate has no right to raise 
questions of difficulty when confronted with her 
own enterprises of duty. It is conceivable that 
through long disobedience and neglect, the atrophy 
of her spiritual powers and the enervation due to 
her selfishness, the Church might have lost the 
fresh vigor and the fervent faith necessary for the 
speedy evangelization of the world ; but incapacities 
self-created cannot constitute exemptions from duty. 
No difficulty that the most reluctant Christian can 
invent can suffice to nullify for us the ever-living 
and imperative obligation to make Jesus Christ 
known to all mankind. 

But frankly, and confronting the problem of the 
world's evangelization, there is not one of us who 
dare allege that it is an impossible duty. We are 
able to make Jesus Christ known to the world at 
once, so far as the world is concerned. It is open 
now to the gospel as it never has been before. A 
few hundred years ago the world paused on the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 179 

seacoast of Africa, and its maps of the interior 
revealed its absolute ignorance of the continent. 
The Mohammedan world, bigoted and not under- 
stood, was without a single Christian missionary. 
The East India Company pursued the consistent 
policy of* excluding missionaries from its territories 
in India, and sought to include all India in its 
territories. The cannon of the Opium "War had not 
yet brought China the blessings of the gospel, and 
the curse of the traffic which gave its name of 
infamy to the war. The edicts which prohibited 
Christian faith still stood by the roadsides in Japan, 
while the chains of Home's political sovereignty 
still bound without exception the Latin states of the 
Western Hemisphere. The world was a sealed 
world ; as sealed against the gospel as was the heart 
of the Church against the purpose to proclaim it. 
Now, we stand before a world with all its gates 
ajar. "We have no right to say of any single 
country longer that it is barred against the gospel. 
If we say this still of Afghanistan and Tibet or of 
any other land, it may be truly answered that the 
Church has no right to call any door closed which 
she has had neither faith nor courage to attempt to 
open and pass through. 

To our ability to enter the whole world must be 
added now our knowledge of the physical con- 
ditions under which the mission work must be 
done, our acquaintance with the opinions and 
superstitions of its people, our experiences of the 



180 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

real character of the missionary problem, of the 
exact difficulties it must meet, and the precise work 
it has to do ; while the genius of a hundred years of 
the most fertile intellectual activity of the race has 
spent itself in devising means and facilities for the 
use of the Church in the day when she shall awake 
to perceive the true glory of her mission in the 
world. 

Eot alone in taking Jesus Christ to the world at 
once are there no insuperable hindrances, so far as 
the world is concerned, but there is nothing in the 
equipment of the Church to forbid. It was re- 
ported at the Ecumenical Conference that there are 
now five hundred and thirty-seven missionary so- 
cieties, representing hundreds of branches of the 
Christian Church. It is a pathetic commentary 
upon the prayer of our Lord, " That they may be 
one, even as we are one ; I in them, and thou in me, 
that they may be perfected into one ; that the world 
may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst 
them, even as thou lovedst me," but it is evidence 
that the Church possesses all the necessary mis- 
sionary agencies. She has also sufficient agents. 
It was reported at the Ecumenical Conference that 
these missionary societies have already at work 
upon the foreign field, fifteen thousand four hun- 
dred and sixty missionaries. It is declared also 
that in this generation there will go out from our 
higher institutions of learning two million young 
men and women. A fraction of this immense 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 181 

multitude added to the force upon the field 
and properly supported by an army of native 
agents, would suffice to make Jesus Christ known to 
every creature before the younger generation repre- 
sented here this afternoon has passed away. And the 
Church has ample means. According to the census 
of 1890, the wealth of this land was $65,037,091,197. 
The rate of increase which prevailed in the decade 
ending with 1890 would make our wealth now 
$96,905,265,873, an increase of $31,868,174,676 in 
ten years. It is less than a reasonable estimate to 
say that one-thirtieth of the population of this 
country is in direct affiliation with our Church. It 
is notorious that we possess a disproportionate share 
of the wealth of this land. But assuming only that 
one-thirtieth of the wealth of this country is in 
Presbyterian hands, the census of 1900 would in- 
dicate that we are worth as a Church, approxi- 
mately $3,230,175,529 and that we have added 
to our wealth over and above all our expenses 
of living, all that we have lavished on luxury, 
and all that we have given, away, approximately 
$106,227,248 each year since the census of 1890. 
We have averaged during these same years, an 
annual contribution toward the evangelization of 
the heathen world of $901,262, that is, less than 
one one-hundredth of the annual increase of the 
wealth of our Church, and less than one three- 
thousandth of the Church's total wealth. In the 
Old Dispensation God asked a tithe and in the New 



182 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

demanded the whole of our life and possession as 
his own, and now for the evangelization of the 
whole unchristian world our Church gives less 
than a tithe of a tithe, not of its income, but of what 
it saves out of its income. 

Not alone has the Church the agencies, the agents 
and the means, she has also available omnipotent re- 
sources. The power of the Holy Spirit, using her 
present equipment, would carry at once on the lips of 
a Church made up of truly earnest men, the gospel of 
the world's Kedeemer to all the multitudes for whom 
he died. " If we could bring back the Church of 
Pentecost to earth," said Bishop Thoburn, "or, 
rather, if we could receive anew universally the 
spirit of that model Church of all ages, the idea of 
evangelizing the world in a single generation would 
no longer appear visionary ; but on the other hand 
it would seem so reasonable, so practicable, and the 
duty to perform it so imperative, that every one 
would begin to wonder why any intelligent Chris- 
tians had ever doubted its possibility, or been con- 
tent to let weary years go by without a vast uni- 
versal movement throughout all the Churches of 
Christendom at once to go forward and complete 
the task." And what the Church could do if pos- 
sessed once more by the spirit of the living God, 
she ought to do. " It is the duty of Christians," as 
Dr. Joel Parker declared, " to evangelize the whole 
world immediately. The present generation is 
competent under God to achieve the work. There 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 183 

are means enough in the power of the Church to do 
it. There is money that can be counted in millions 
that can be spared without producing any serious 
want. There are men enough for the missionary 
work." Whatever may have been the Church's 
position in any earlier day, her position now is one 
of perfect competence to obey literally the last 
command of Jesus Christ. As one of our own mis- 
sionaries, Dr. Mateer, a sober man, has said : " Once 
the world seemed boundless and the Church was poor 
and persecuted. ~No wonder the work of evangeliz- 
ing the world within a reasonable time seemed 
hopeless. Now steam and electricity have brought 
the world together. The Church of God is in the 
ascendant. She has well within her control the 
power, the wealth, and the learning of the world. 
She is like a strong and well-appointed army in the 
presence of the foe. The only thing she needs is 
the spirit of her Leader and a willingness to obey 
his summons to go forward. The victory may not 
be easy but it is sure." If this were a human 
venture men would not be wasting their time in the 
discussion of its practicability. Men and money in 
unstinted measure would be poured out if this were 
a war for the acquisition of territory, for the sub- 
jugation of nations, for the suppression of disorder. 
Difficulties arise before our own country in the 
Philippines, a small fraction of whose eight million 
people are in insurrection against authority legiti- 
mately established over them. We are already 



184 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

maintaining in the Philippines an army of 50,000 
men, three times the number of all the missionaries 
sent out by the whole Protestant Church for the 
evangelization of the world. Two small states re- 
sist the power of the British Government and, we 
must believe, the movement of destiny in South 
Africa, and Great Britain maintains there an army 
of 200,000 men, a force four times as great as 
would be required for the evangelization of the 
world, maintained at an expenditure that would 
suffice to support a missionary enterprise as glorious 
as the slaughter of men who believe they are fight- 
ing for their liberties is sad. The Standard Oil 
Company sends its flickering lights throughout the 
length and breadth of Asia, and laughs at the diffi- 
culties that must be overcome. There will be thou- 
sands of households lighted by our oil to-night in the 
villages of Asia where the true Light has never 
shined. 

My friends, if we were in earnest about it, if we 
truly believed that it was a great thing to do, a 
thing that must be done, if Christ were enough to 
each one of us to make us think it worth while to 
put him in the reach of our fellow-men, we could 
evangelize the world speedily with neither difficulty 
nor sacrifice worthy of the name. 

But what we do we mean by " speedily." How 
speedily must Jesus Christ be made known to 
the world? The missionaries in China, sensible 
men, misled by no hallucination and pursuing no 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 185 

fanciful illusion, gave us their reply twenty-five 
years ago : " We want China emancipated from the 
thraldom of sin in this generation. It is possible. 
Our Lord has said, ' According to your faith be it 
unto you.' The Church of God can do it, if she be 
only faithful to her great commission. . . . 
Standing on the borders of this vast empire, we, 
therefore, one hundred and twenty missionaries, 
from almost every evangelical religious denomina- 
tion in Europe and America, assembled in General 
Conference at Shanghai, and representing the 
whole body of Protestant missionaries in China — 
feeling our utter insufficiency for the great work so 
rapidly expanding, do most earnestly plead, with 
one voice, calling upon the whole Church of God 
for more laborers. And we will as earnestly and 
unitedly plead at the Throne of Grace that the 
Spirit of God may move the hearts of all to whom 
this appeal comes, to cry, ' Lord, what wilt thou 
have me to do?' And may this spirit be com- 
municated from heart to heart, from church to 
church, from continent to continent, until the 
whole Christian world shall be aroused, and every 
soldier of the cross shall come to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty." What evangelization 
can there be that is not immediate ? If I were a 
heathen man, the evangelization that did not reach 
me in my lifetime would be no evangelization at 
all. And the world in which we as Christians are 
to preach the gospel is this present world, with its 



186 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

now living multitudes of men and women for whom 
Jesus Christ died. As the missionaries in the 
Sandwich Islands declared in their appeal more 
than two generations ago, "It is not possible for 
the coming generation to discharge the duties of 
the present, whether it respects their repentance, 
faith, or works ; and to commit to them our share 
of preaching Christ crucified to the heathen is like 
committing to them the love due from us to God 
and our neighbor. The Lord will require of us 
that which is committed to us." 

Yet there will creep about in our hearts, lurking 
where the light cannot reach, the unchristian 
doubt : " Is it necessary for us to concern ourselves 
with this thing ? Suppose we can evangelize the 
world, why should we ? In the providential order- 
ing of history, eighteen hundred years have passed 
by and the thing has not been done. "What is there 
to show that a duty that lay dormant for these 
centuries by the will of God, is acute and pressing 
now?" One hundred years ago men talked this 
way. "Let us pray that Christ's kingdom may 
come," said Alexander Carlyle, opposing the es- 
tablishment of foreign missions in the General 
Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1796, " as 
we are sure it shall come in the course of provi- 
dence." That was the tone of that day. That 
view is intelligible on the lips of unconverted men 
whether in or out of the Church, but it is not intelli- 
gible on the lips of Christians. If the world has no 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 187 

need of Christ, we have no need of him. If the 
evangelization of China must be left to providence 
unaided by the Church, the evangelization of America 
and the support of Christian ministers here may be 
left to the same kindly unaided beneficence. What- 
ever Christ is to me he can be to every man in this 
world. If I cannot live without him, no other man 
can live without him. As he only has healed our 
lives, comforted our hearts, broken the chains of 
our sins, and given us assured hope of what lies be- 
yond, he only can do these things for all mankind. 
And not only does the world need him now, but 
we need to give him now to the world. The world 
will not more surely die without him, than we will 
die with him if we refuse to obey him, and look 
with careless, Chris tless hearts upon the world that 
waits for him. The Lambeth Conference touched 
the profound Christian truth when it declared, 
" The fulfillment of our Lord's great commission to 
evangelize all nations is a necessary and constant 
element in the spiritual life of the Church and of 
each member of it." Can you conceive of anything 
more fatal, more monstrous, more immoral than a 
doctrine which declares men lost without Christ, 
and then refuses to make Christ known to them ? 
The Church that proclaims its belief in the Lord of 
all, and declares that there is none other name 
under heaven given among men whereby we must 
be saved than the name of Christ, and does not at 
once make it its supreme business to make Jesus 



188 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Christ known to the whole world, is either insincere 
in its professions of belief, or it presents a spectacle 
of a debased sense of moral integrity than which I 
can conceive of nothing more despicable and loath- 
some. It will not do for us to cover the want of 
present missionary impulse with the excuse of pro- 
spective missionary purpose. As Mr. Eugene Stock 
has said : " For whom are we responsible to give 
them the gospel? Certainly not for past genera- 
tions. They are beyond our reach. Nor for future 
generations primarily, although what we do now 
may have great influence upon them. But for the 
present generation we are surely responsible. 
Every living African or Persian or Chinaman has a 
right to the good news of salvation. They are for 
him; and as a Chinaman once said to Robert 
Stewart, 6 we break the eighth commandment if we 
keep them back from him.' So if we vary the form 
of the phrase and simply say the evangelization of 
this generation, this appears to be a plain and 
elementary duty. We may not have the expressed 
command of Christ for it, but we have the general 
command to make the gospel known to those who 
know it not. There seems no escape from the con- 
clusion that the duty to make it known to all, that 
is, to all now alive, lies in the nature of the case. 
This doubtless should be our honest and definite 
aim." And if the world needs the gospel and we 
need at once to give the world the gospel, Christ 
also needs the immediate preaching of his gospel to 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 189 

the world. Our delay is not alone the source of 
loss and death to ourselves and to men ; it prolongs 
the travail of the soul of Christ, and defers the 
long expected day of his triumph. 

1 ' The restless millions wait 
The light whose dawning maketh all things new," 

is only a half truth ; 



And what are God's present dealings with us 
designed to teach us if not that he is ready to do 
great things ? As Dr. Wilder used to say : " The 
largeness of God's blessing on the puny efforts 
already made for evangelizing the heathen, demon- 
strates beyond the possibility of a doubt, that we 
are well able to evangelize the whole world in a 
single generation." Bishop Moule, of Hangchow, 
told me when in China, that when he came to 
Hangchow there were forty Protestant Christians 
in the Chinese Empire. He has seen in his lifetime 
the Protestant Church in China multiplied two 
hundred and fifty thousand per cent., and penetrate 
to almost every prefecture of the Empire. Of the 
great province of Manchuria, a barren field twenty 
years ago, Dr. Ross, of the Scotch Presbyterian 
Church, now declares : " The gospel is speedily 
gaining such a rapid diffusion that we may antici- 
pate at no distant date its contact with every 
village and town in the country." While there is 



190 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

nothing in God to bar our seeing all over the world 
repetitions of the triumph which George Pilking- 
ton describes in Uganda : " A hundred thousand 
souls brought into close contact with the gospel, 
half of them able to read for themselves ; two 
hundred buildings raised by native Christians in 
which to worship God and read his word ; two 
hundred native evangelists and teachers entirely 
supported by the native Church; ten thousand 
copies of the New Testament in circulation; six 
thousand souls eagerly seeking daily instruction ; 
statistics of baptism, of confirmation, of adherents, 
of teachers, more than doubling yearly for the last 
six or seven years, ever since the return of the 
Christians from exile ; the power of God shown by 
changed lives; and all this in the center of the 
thickest spiritual darkness in the world ! . . . 
1 The world to be evangelized in this generation ' — 
can it be done ? Kyagwe, a province fifty miles 
square, has had the gospel preached, by lip and life, 
through almost every village in the space of one 
short year, by some seventy native evangelists, 
under the supervision of only two Europeans ! 
The teacher on Busi has by this time probably 
accomplished his purpose of visiting every house in 
that island with the message of salvation on his 
lips. Soon we may hope that there will be no 
house left in Uganda that has not had God's mes- 
sage brought thus to its very threshold." We need 
to recall in this matter that it is for God that we 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 191 

are working. I said a moment ago, that if this 
were a human enterprise men would scorn to waste 
time in discussing its feasibility. Shall we have 
less faith in God than men have in themselves ? If 
the work of evangelizing the world at once as a 
human enterprise is practicable, does it become im- 
practicable when we realize that it is a divine en- 
terprise ? We keep falling back upon this fallacy 
in our thoughts about it. We need to remind 
ourselves of the question with which Sojourner 
Truth rebuked Frederick Douglass, when in one of 
his moods of despair as to his people ; — the question 
alleged to have been addressed by his wife to 
Martin Luther also : " Frederick, is God dead ? " 
My friends, who set us this work to do ? On whose 
errand is it that we are going ? Whose kingdom 
is to be established ? It was the Lord of heaven 
and earth to whom power was given, and nothing 
is impossible with him, who, when he said, "Go 
ye," said in the same breath, "And I am with you." 
Now, if we can, and we ought, shall we? 
The general duty of world-evangelization the 
Church has acknowledged for years, and neglected. 
Is this not the hour to acknowledge our duty once 
again, and perform ? But men say, is it not 
God's rule to work by slow and unperceived 
change, lodging in human life principles which 
creep imperceptibly outward until at last great 
changes are wrought before men are aware ? Do 
not Schmidt and Lecky and a hundred more demon- 



192 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

strate " that social emancipation has been far more 
the result of the indirect than of the direct action 
of Christianity. Even slavery was allowed to exist 
within the borders of the Church until the leaven 
of the Christian spirit had so operated that slavery 
became impossible. Great changes come slowly." 
This is true ; but it was in a cataclysm of heroic 
wrath against the iniquity of human slavery, and 
of noble pity for the human slave, that at last the 
chains of that iniquity were broken. It is true that 
the forces of God work quietly and imperceptibly 
until the hour of judgment strikes. There were 
the long expectant years of prophecy borne with 
the agony of hope deferred, but then at last there 
came a man sent from God, whose name was John, 
and on his heels the Messiah broke upon the nation. 
The long centuries we call the Dark Ages threw their 
black shadows over the world, and the forces of 
God wrought silently and unperceived beneath ; 
but at last the thunders of the Eeformation tore 
the sky, and great lies were slain in an hour that 
had worn crowns and held scepters and damned 
men. 

11 'Tis first the night, stem night of storm and war, 
Long night of heavy clouds and veiled skies ; 
Then the far sparkle of the morning star 
That bids the saints awake, and dawn arise.' ' 

God's method in history is to prepare, but it is 
also, having prepared, to strike; and his method 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 193 

we must believe in the world's evangelization is the 
same. " Many persons mistake the way in which 
the conversion of India will be brought about," said 
Sir Charles Trevelyan. "I believe it will take 
place wholesale, just as our own ancestors were 
converted. The country will have Christian in- 
struction infused into it in every way by direct 
missionary education, and indirectly by books of 
various sorts, through the public papers, through 
conversations with Europeans, and in all the con- 
ceivable ways in which knowledge is communicated. 
Then at last when society is completely saturated 
with Christian knowledge, and public opinion has 
taken a decided turn that way, they will come over 
by thousands." But just when India, or any other 
land is ready to swing over to Christ, we may not 
tell. That this is the day when the trial should be 
made and the opportunity given, we dare not 
doubt. For one hundred years the forces which 
are pouring into the world still from the pierced 
hands of Christ have been fashioning in heathen 
lands the thoughts of men, shattering their super- 
stitions, cutting away old restraints, and shaping 
the whole course of their unresting movement. 
But all this so to speak indirect evangelization is 
but preparatory to that supreme discharge of her 
duty by the Christian Church, which shall show to 
the whole world that God has been making it ready 
to become the kingdom of his Son. To do this 
thing now is the duty of this generation. " The 

13 



194 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

world has too long been under the influence," as 
the Sandwich Islands missionaries said, " of the 
scheme of committing the heathen to the next gen- 
eration." " I regard the idea of the evangelization 
of the world," says one of our own missionaries, 
Dr. J. C. R. Ewing, " in this generation as entirely 
scriptural. There is not a hint in the Word to lead 
us to adopt the popular theory that it is the Church's 
task to strive, generation after generation, to gather 
out the few. ' The gospel to every creature '-—that 
means to every man and woman living now. It is 
the fault of the Church if from amongst the present 
living generation any advance to old age without 
hearing of Christ and his salvation." 

Some such noble idea as this is the vital need of 
the Christian Church. There was a time when the 
Church had to fight doctrinally for her life ; when 
heresy after heresy, involving the most funda- 
mental issues in the evangelical faith assailed her, 
and so hedged her in that the mere struggle for ex- 
istence consumed all her strength. That day went 
by long ago. For the Church now to spend her 
whole strength on that battlefield is to war with 
phantoms, save as the neglect of personal living 
duty will furnish the very soil in which fresh 
heresies will grow. Let her hear the call of the 
Lord of the harvest bidding her go out now into 
the highways and the hedges and the ungarnered 
fields, and compel men to come in. A Church 
wholly surrendered to Christ's personal leadership, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 195 

utterly bent upon the largest human service, filled 
with the passion of a great and divine love, will 
escape heresy by subduing unbelief. Oh, my friends, 
our Church needs a supreme world purpose, such as 
this of which I have been speaking, that will forbid 
our trifling away the time of God, playing with 
details while men die. And if you wish to lay hold 
upon the hearts of the young men and the young 
women, without whom the Church cannot live, you 
must offer them some such masterful mission as 
this. It was this that thrilled the early Church. 
"Yea, so have I been ambitious," said Paul, "to 
preach the gospel not where Christ was already 
named, lest I should build on another man's founda- 
tion ; but as it is written, They shall see, to whom 
no tidings of him came, and they who have not 
heard shall understand." You must win young 
men and young women by offering them the glory 
of a great service, which is also a great sacrifice. I 
know their hearts, and I tell you they are lost to 
the Church that does not look out upon the world 
with the very eyes of Christ, and hunger for it 
with his hunger, and teach its children to live for 
it and to die for it with devotion like his. 

It cannot be denied that the work is enormous. 
But its difficulties are its glory. " I will tarry at 
Ephesus until Pentecost," said Paul in one of his 
Epistles, "for a great door and effectual is open 
unto me, and there are many adversaries." We 
should have said " but." But no such thought pol- 



196 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

luted Paul's spirit ; " and adversaries ; " — they con- 
stituted his opportunity; they did not qualify 
it. They made Ephesus a field of work which he 
could not resist. When Xavier looked from San- 
cian toward the barred gates of China, and cried, 
" O rock, rock, when wilt thou open to my Mas- 
ter ? " he called every heroic heart in the Christian 
Church to give itself to the evangelization of that 
sealed land. Of all the mission fields in the world 
to-day, is there one which stirs the hearts of true 
men and kindles in their souls again the ardor 
of the Crusades and the zeal of Raymond Lull, as 
Islam? Christianity from the beginning has 
" relished tasks for their bigness," as Stanley said 
of Glave, "and greeted hard labor with a fierce 
joy." " I am happy," wrote Neesima, " in a medi- 
tation on the marvelous growth of Christianity in 
the world, and believe that if it finds any obstacles 
it will advance still faster and swifter, as the stream 
does run faster when it does find any hindrances on 
the course." 

I have purposely said this to suggest and make 
room for all the objections which lack of faith and 
lack of love can bring to birth in our hearts. The 
immediate evangelization of the world, men say, 
would involve superficial work ; let us be slow and 
thorough. Slow and thorough is one thing ; slow 
and stagnant is another. Superficial work ! Who 
proposed that the world should be superficially 
evangelized ? I have been quoting our own mis- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 197 

sionaries this afternoon, men like Dr. Mateer and 
Dr. Ewing, who are engaged in educational work 
in the most thorough educational institutions in 
China and North India, for the purpose of show- 
ing that men who are doing the most solid 
and substantial mission work in the world are not 
blinded thereby to the Church's immediate duty to 
make Jesus Christ known to every creature. Su- 
perficial work ! I suppose that in our Lord's par- 
able that husbandman escaped this peril who 
wrapped his pound in a napkin and hid it in the 
ground. But the Lord gave his commendation to 
the man who, having five pounds, traded with 
them superficially, on the face of the ground, and 
made with them five other pounds. We have be- 
trayed our Lord under the pretense of doing thor- 
oughly his work in this land, where we have sown 
the seed over and over again in ground already 
sowed, while two-thirds of the human race have 
been allowed to live and die in ignorance of the fact 
that there is a Saviour or any love of God. And 
in our folly we have forfeited the richest spiritual 
blessing at home by deliberately transgressing the 
plainest divine law, " There is that scattereth and 
yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more 
than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty." Or, it is 
said that the project of evangelizing the world, 
practical enough theoretically, is actually imprac- 
ticable. Men are too much engrossed, it is said, in 
the pursuit of gain. 



198 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

1 ' By other sounds the world is won 
Than that which wails from Macedon ; 
The roar of gain is round it rolled, 
Or men unto themselves are sold, 
And cannot list the alien cry, 
1 Oh, hear and help us lest we die ! ' " 

But what is this but the confession that we can- 
not do our duty because we will not? Or, it is 
said that the immediate evangelization of the world 
is a visionary and childlike project. I think it is. 
And where there is no vision, the people perish ; 
" and except ye be converted and become as little 
children, ye cannot see the kingdom of God." It is 
a project of childlike faith and of glorious vision. 
And these are the visions of it : A Church obedient 
to her Head, warm with the glow of a great love, 
and thrilled with all the activities of a perfect 
service ; a redeemed world free from the bondage 
of its sin, and worshiping with glad hearts ; and in 
innumerable homes, and with hearts and homes 
alike purified, adoring the world's Redeemer ; and a 
reigning Saviour crowned at last, rejoicing in the 
love of his Church, and satisfied with the success 
of his work for the world. These are the visions 
which the evangelization of the world lifts before 
our eyes. Is there anything to shrink from in them ? 
Could there be visions more enticing ? 

Let us go up at once to complete this work. 
Whether or not the whole Church of Christ will 
awake to her duty, at least let us not be asleep to 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 199 

ours. Whether the whole Church can evangelize 
the whole world or not, we can evangelize the fields 
for which we are immediately responsible. What 
Mr. Moffett says of Korea, is essentially true of all 
of them. " Korea can be evangelized within a gen- 
eration, but in order to accomplish it there is needed 
an added force of forty thoroughly qualified mis- 
sionaries of enthusiastic, victorious faith in God and 
his message. It would also be necessary to have on 
the home field, a Church willing to send them and 
to stand back of them in prayer, led by pastors who 
will influence their people to appreciate the privi- 
lege as well as the duty of the Church to perform 
its God-given office of world-wide evangelization.' ' 
There are many things for which we are not re- 
sponsible, which sweep out beyond the reach of our 
influence or direction. But for this one thing we 
are. As the appeal of the Ecumenical Conference 
to the Christian Church declared : " Entrusting to 
him the certain guidance of the great tides of in- 
fluence and life which are beyond our control, it is 
for us to keep the commandments of his Son, and 
carry to those for whom he lived and died and 
rose again the message of the goodness and love of 
their Father and ours. We who live now and have 
this message must carry it to those who live now 
and are without it. It is the duty of each genera- 
tion of Christians to make Jesus Christ known to 
their fellow-creatures. It is our duty through our 
preachers and those forces and institutions which 



200 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

grow up where the gospel prevails, to attempt now the 
speedy evangelization of the whole world. We be- 
lieve this to be God's present call, ' Whom shall I 
send, and who will go for us ? ' We appeal to all 
Christian ministers set by divine appointment as 
leaders of the people, to hear this call and speak it 
to the Church, and we appeal to all God's people to 
answer as with one voice, * Lord, here am I, send 
me.'" 

I have ventured to speak of this great duty in 
other terms than those employed in the assigned 
subject, "The speedy bringing of the world to 
Christ." The speedy bringing of the world to 
Christ is a consequence; the speedy bringing of 
Christ to the world is the necessary preliminary. 
The world can never be brought to Christ until 
Christ is first brought to the world. It is vain for 
us to ask God for one, until we have done the other. 
If we bring Christ to the world, God will bring the 
world to Christ. And the fact that God has bidden 
us to do this thing, lifts our duty at once above all 
cavil and excuse. Let us persuade ourselves of 
this once for all by these three great testimonies : 
"During the latter part of these eighteen centu- 
ries," said the Earl of Shaftesbury, at the Liverpool 
Missionary Conference, " it has been in the power 
of those who hold the truth, having means enough, 
having knowledge enough, and having opportunity 
enough, to evangelize the globe fifty times over." 
" It is my deep conviction," said Simeon Calhoun, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 201 

the Saint of Lebanon, as the Syrians called him, in 
his dying words, " and I say it again and again, that 
if the Church of Christ were what she ought to be, 
twenty years would not pass away until the story 
of the Cross will be uttered in the ears of every liv- 
ing man." And the testimony of One greater than 
either of these, whose name is above every other 
name, who, in the days of his flesh, sat wearied by 
Jacob's well, and lifting up his eyes and looking 
upon the people as they came to him from the 
village, drawn by the testimony of the woman that 
he was the Christ, said to his disciples, " Say not 
ye there are yet four months, and then cometh the 
harvest ? Behold I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, 
and look on the fields, that they are white already 
unto harvest." The fields that were white then, 
are white now, if we had but eyes to see, and hearts 
to heed. 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
MOVEMENT 



REPORT ON THE MEMORIAL FUND 



THE TWENTIETH CENTUKY MOVEMENT 



REPORT ON THE MEMORIAL FUND 1 

1 This report was read as a part of the proceedings of the even- 
ing, by order of the Assembly. 



The committee on the Twentieth Century Fund, 
through its chairman, Be v. Marcus A. Brownson, 
D. D., presented its report, as follows : 

The committee appointed by the General Assem- 
bly of 1900 to direct the raising of a fund for the 
strengthening of the Church and its Boards and in- 
stitutions, in order to a larger work in the new 
century, would report to the General Assembly of 
1901, as follows : 

The resolutions of the General Assembly author- 
izing this movement were : 

" 1. That a special memorial fund, to be known 
as the Twentieth Century Fund, be raised for the 
endowment of Presbyterian academic, collegiate 
and theological institutions, for the enlargement of 
missionary enterprises, for the erection of church 
buildings and the payment of debts upon churches 

205 



206 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

and educational institutions, and for the other work 
of the Boards, at the option of the donors ; contri- 
butions to specific objects to be strictly regarded, 
and contributions to the general work to be distrib- 
uted according to the proportions which have been 
designated by our General Assembly as applying to 
miscellaneous offerings; and care shall be taken 
that this special effort shall in no way conflict with 
or diminish the regular contributions to the treas- 
uries of the several Boards. 

" 2. That in connection with the fund a central 
committee be appointed, to consist of seven minis- 
ters and six elders, whose headquarters shall be in 
Philadelphia ; which committee shall have a general 
supervision of the work, shall publish appropriate 
literature for the furtherance of the object, making 
the widest possible distribution of the same, all ex- 
penses to be met out of the general contributions ; 
and that the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly 
be appointed treasurer of the fund, to serve with- 
out expense, except for such clerical assistance as 
may be required " (Minutes for 1900, p. 19). 

The moderator announced the appointment of the 
following persons to constitute this special commit- 
tee : Ministers — Marcus A. Brownson, D. D., Phila- 
delphia, Pa. ; George T. Purves, D. D., New York, 
K Y. ; Eichard S. Holmes, D. D., Pittsburg, Pa. ; 
Kobert Hunter, D. D., Philadelphia, Pa. ; Eichard 
D. Harlan, Eochester, 1ST. Y. ; William J. Chiches- 
ter, D. D., Chicago, 111. ; William J. McKittrick, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 207 

D. D., St. Louis, Mo. Ruling Elders — John H. 
Converse, Philadelphia, Pa.; Louis H. Severance, 
Cleveland, O. ; Frank K. Hippie, Philadelphia, Pa. ; 
John Wanamaker, Philadelphia, Pa.; William E. 
Dodge, New York, 1ST. Y. ; William B. Gurley, 
Washington, D. C. 

The moderator was authorized by the Assembly 
to increase the committee (Minutes for 1900, 
p. 154), and subsequently, with a view to a fuller 
representation of the different parts of the Church, 
added the following persons to its membership: 
Ministers — James McLeod, D. D., Scranton, Pa. ; 
Donald Guthrie, D. D., Baltimore, Md. ; J. Kinsey 
Smith, D. D., Louisville, Ky. ; E. Trumbull Lee, 
D. D., Cincinnati, O. ; James D. Paxton, D. D., St. 
Paul, Minn. ; Thomas Y. Moore, Omaha, Neb. ; 
Kobert F. Coyle, D. D., Denver, Col. ; John Hemp- 
hill, D. D., San Francisco, Cal. ; Edgar P. Hill, 
D. D., Portland, Ore. ; A. Nelson Hollifield, D. D., 
Newark, N. J. Ruling Elders — H. Edwards Eow- 
land, New York, N. Y. ; William M. Lanning, 
Trenton, N. J. ; William P. Potter, Pittsburg, Pa. ; 
Albert P. Stevens, Albany, N. Y. ; S. M. Clement, 
Buffalo, N. Y. ; John Willis Baer, Boston, Mass. ; 
James Joy, Detroit, Mich. ; James A. Mount, 
Indianapolis, Ind. ; S. A. Harris, Minneapolis, 
Minn. ; C. A. Maynard, Milwaukee, Wis. 

The committee and the Church were called to 
mourn the deaths of Dr. Hollifield and Governor 
Mount, whose cordial interest gave promise of great 



208 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

usefulness in this service to our Church. The 
moderator appointed in place of Dr. Hollifield, Eev. 
Dr. Lyman W. Allen, D. D., but no person as yet 
in place of Governor Mount. 

The committee, as thus constituted, has prosecuted 
the work intrusted to it with diligence and vigor. 

A meeting for organization was held in Philadel- 
phia, June 26, 1900, and the committee gave care- 
ful consideration to the work assigned to it by the 
General Assembly. The Philadelphia members of 
the committee were made the Executive Commit- 
tee, with power to arrange all details of the work. 
The treasurer of the fund, Kev. Dr. W. H. Koberts, 
was made the secretary of the General and the 
Executive Committees, and was requested to cor- 
respond with moderators and stated clerks of all 
the Presbyteries and Synods. This laborious and 
freely rendered service resulted in the efficient 
organization of our work in 190 Presbyteries and in 
most of the Synods. 

It was determined by the committee to place 
before the whole Church the following objects as 
contemplated by the action of the Assembly : 

1. The increase of contributions to all the 
Boards of the Church. 

2. The enlargement of the work of the Boards 
as suggested by them. 

3. The increased endowment of academic, col- 
legiate and theological institutions. 

4. The payment of local church debts. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 209 

5. The improvement of the properties of con- 
gregations and institutions. 

6. Church extension in cities. 

7. The establishment or endowment of hospitals 
and other benevolent institutions connected with 
our Church. 

8. Special efforts for strengthening the general 
interests of the Church, assumed by individuals, 
congregations, Presbyteries or Synods. 

It was further determined by the committee to 
labor directly for the welfare of the Boards of the 
Church and the Theological Seminaries under the 
control of the Assembly. It was also decided to 
request Synodical Committees to prosecute the 
work of gathering gifts for academic and collegiate 
institutions sustaining relations to them, and for 
Synodical Sustentation in Synods in which that 
method of home missionary work is followed ; and 
still further, Presbyteries were requested to stimu- 
late congregations to pay off any existing indebted- 
ness that might hinder, on the part of these con- 
gregations, the enlargement of the missionary, 
benevolent and educational work of the Church ; to 
make any needed improvements in church build- 
ings ; to establish new churches where needed, and, 
in general, to strengthen the denomination within 
their bounds. 

This plan has been adhered to and the cordial 
cooperation of synodical and presbyterial Commit- 
tees is hereby gratefully acknowledged. 
14 



210 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The committee desires also to express its obliga- 
tions to former committees of the General Assembly 
of a similar character, particularly the Anniversary 
Reunion Committee, the Committee on the Centen- 
ary Fund, and the Committee on the Memorial 
Reunion Fund, whose principles of procedure have 
been largely followed, and whose successful work 
has been a great inspiration. 

The executive section of the committee has held 
frequent meetings throughout the year, having 
established quarters in Rooms 401-2, Witherspoon 
Building, Philadelphia, generously provided by the 
Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 
without expense to the Church. In pursuance of 
its work, the Executive Committee, together with 
Rev. Dr. George T. Purves, Mr. H. Edwards Row- 
land, of New York, and Mr. L. H. Severance, of 
Cleveland, of the General Committee, met with the 
Secretaries of. our eight Church Boards on Novem- 
ber 1, 1900, in New York city. The desires and 
needs of the Boards were talked over at length at 
this conference, and the committee was informed as 
to the earnest desires of the various Boards for in- 
creased resources, in the face of multiplied oppor- 
tunities of advancement in every branch of denomi- 
national effort. 

By the generosity of four lay members of the 
committee, the entire expenses incident to this 
work were promptly provided for, up to the meet- 
ing of this General Assembly, although the com- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 211 

mittee had been authorized by the Assembly to 
deduct the amount of its expenses from the general 
contributions. These personal gifts enabled the 
committee to announce at the beginning of its 
work, that every dollar contributed to the objects 
included in the fund would go as directed by the 
donors. It has been a unique feature in this work ; 
no such committee, in the history of the General 
Assembly, having thus provided for its own 
expenses. 

At the suggestion of the Secretaries of the 
Boards, and subsequently after careful considera- 
tion by the committee, it was determined to secure 
the services of a representative of the fund who 
should visit the various cities of the country, and 
by addressing public meetings in these centers of 
influence, and by communications with individuals 
throughout the Church, thus bring the plan before 
the Church at large. 

The moderator of the General Assembly, Eev. 
Charles A. Dickey, D. D., was unanimously agreed 
upon, and, after conference with the Session and 
Board of Trustees of the Bethany Presbyterian 
Church of Philadelphia, of which church Dr. Dickey 
is one of the pastors, and with the Board of Trustees 
of the Presbyterian Hospital of Philadelphia, of 
which institution Dr. Dickey is the president, the 
committee was able to persuade him to accept the 
office of representative of the fund, from December 
1, 1900, to the 1st of June, 1901. 



212 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

It has been of the highest value to this work, 
that it has been so forcibly presented by the mod- 
erator of the General Assembly in the leading 
cities of the land. Dr. Dickey will make a separate 
report of his work to the Assembly. The com- 
mittee desires to record its gratitude and the grati- 
tude of the Church to him for his earnest and 
efficient advocacy of this cause. 

From the office of the committee in the Wither- 
spoon Building, hundreds of letters to pastors, 
prominent laymen, presbyterial and synodical 
committeemen have been sent out. Eight series of 
circulars, setting forth in full the nature and claims 
of this work, have been printed and distributed 
throughout the Church to the number of two hun- 
dred thousand copies. These circulars have set 
forth the resolutions of the Assembly pertaining to 
the subject, the objects for which contributions and 
subscriptions were requested, the statements from 
the Boards and the Theological Seminaries, and 
with them a specially -prepared subscription blank 
has been distributed to the extent of one hundred 
thousand copies. 

The blank reads as follows : — 

" In grateful recognition of the goodness of God 
to the Presbyterian Church in the IT. S. A. during 
the Nineteenth Century, and of the great oppor- 
tunities for spiritual progress during the Twentieth 
Century, I hereby subscribe to The Twentieth 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 213 

Century Fund, established by the General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., the 

sum of dollars, in 

the several amounts and for the causes or objects 
designated by me on the back of this pledge, to be 
paid during the year 1901 to the Treasurer of the 
Fund, the Rev. W. H. Roberts, D. D., or to the 
authorized representatives of such causes or objects. 



[Signature] 



[Place and Date]." 

The Missionary and Benevolent Boards of the 
Church made request through a circular issued by 
the committee for the following amounts as special 
gifts in connection with this fund : 

The Board of Home Missions, seven hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. 

The Board of Foreign Missions, eight hundred 
and twenty-five thousand dollars. 

The Board of Education, two hundred thousand 
dollars, and the establishment of additional scholar- 
ships ranging in amount from twenty-five hundred 
to eight thousand dollars each. 

The Board of Publication and Sabbath-School 
Work, an invested fund of five hundred thousand 
dollars. 



214 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The Board of Church Erection, one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. 

The Board of Eelief, two invested funds yielding 
a yearly income of forty thousand dollars. 

The Board of Missions for Freedmen, two hun- 
dred and fifty thousand dollars, for the endowment 
of Biddle University. 

The Board of Aid for Colleges, one hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars. 

The Theological Seminaries of the Church stated 
their needs through a circular of the committee, as 
follows : 

Princeton, five hundred thousand dollars. 

Auburn, three hundred thousand dollars. 

Western, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

Lane, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. 

Danville, one hundred and ten thousand dollars. 

McCormick, three hundred thousand dollars. 

San Francisco, one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars. 

The German Seminary of the Northwest, fifty 
thousand dollars. 

The German Seminary of Newark, one hundred 
thousand dollars. 

Lincoln University, two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars. 

Omaha, two hundred thousand dollars. 

The committee has noted with satisfaction that 
synodical committees, presbyterial committees, 
the Boards and particular institutions have issued 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 215 

separate statements showing the needs, and the 
claims upon the Church, of these agencies. 

The religious press and the secular press also 
have published important items of information, and 
have presented strong pleas for the fund. 

The results may not be stated with fullness at 
this time for the reason that we have only the be- 
ginning of the returns. The entire Church has 
been moved to thought of larger and nobler things. 
Magnificent advancements have been planned, but 
the scale upon which the work has been projected 
will naturally require more time than the interven- 
ing period between two Assemblies to bring the 
work to perfection. The committee is of the opin- 
ion that not less than twenty millions of dollars 
should be raised for this fund, and that this great 
sum may be pledged, within a year from this time, 
if full and hearty cooperation of pastors, sessions, 
Presbyteries, Synods and the friends of our educa- 
tional, benevolent and missionary work can be 
secured. 

It is with joy and gratitude to God that we pre- 
sent, through the treasurer, the report of the fund 
up to the date of the meeting of the Assembly. 
Our joy is the greater, and our gratitude is the more 
profound because we regard this as only the begin- 
ning of the gifts which the Church will bestow 
upon advance work in the New Century. The 
gratitude of the committee and of the Church are 
due to the treasurer, Eev. William H. Koberts, 



216 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

D. D., for the abundant and untiring labor which 
he has bestowed, without compensation, upon the 
interests involved in this fund. 

The committee presents the following recom- 
mendations for adoption by the Assembly : 

1. That the General Assembly calls upon every 
church in the denomination still burdened with in- 
debtedness and thus hindered from giving its full 
share to missions and benevolence, to take steps 
under the inspiration of this movement to remove 
this indebtedness within the next two years. 

2. That the General Assembly earnestly request 
congregations and individual givers throughout the 
Church to prayerfully consider the enlarged needs 
and larger opportunities of the Boards, of the 
Theological Seminaries, of the academic, collegiate 
and charitable institutions of the Church, and 
speedily to provide for these greater needs as the 
Lord may enable them to do. 

3. That the General Assembly most earnestly 
calls upon the Synods and the Presbyteries to con- 
tinue to prosecute this work during the ensuing 
year by organized effort and hearty cooperation 
with the General Committee. 

4. That in view of the longer time necessary to 
gather in the full results of this Twentieth Century 
Movement, the Assembly's Committee be continued 
for another year, to report to the General Assembly 
in 1902. 

5. That moved by the sense of gratitude to the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 217 

great Head of the Church for his abundant and 
long-continued goodness to our Presbyterian de- 
nomination, and recognizing our contemporary 
responsibility for the relief of the suffering, the 
education of the rising generation, and the salva- 
tion of souls throughout the world, the General 
Assembly hereby expresses the deliberate judgment 
that it is the sacred duty and blessed privilege of 
the Church at the beginning of the new century to 
strengthen all the agencies and institutions em- 
ployed in our work, by furnishing a sum sufficient 
for their enlarged endowment and adequate sup- 
port ; and, in addition, bringing the tithes into the 
storehouse of the Lord of Hosts, to seek by earnest 
prayer the fulfillment of the promise of abundant 
spiritual blessing attached to faithful discharge of 
such a duty. 

For the General Committee, 

Makcus A. Brownson, Chairman, 

Kobert Hunter, 

John H. Converse, 

Frank K. Hipple, 

John Wanamaker, 

Executive Committee. 

The report of the treasurer of the Twentieth 
Century Fund was presented, as follows : — 

The treasurer of the Twentieth Century Fund 
respectfully presents the following statement of 
the total of contributions up to May 10, 1901, 



218 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

to the several objects of the fund, as reported to 
him: 

To the Boards of the Church $106,030 04 

11 Colleges and Academies 330,642 51 

44 Theological Seminaries 110,767 18 

" Local church debts 1,081,654 20 

" Local church improvements 1,537,913 51 

" Hospitals 61,659 28 

41 Young Men's Christian Associations . . 30,900 00 

" Miscellaneous objects 117,464 38 

$3,377,031 10 

These gifts, it is hoped, are but the beginning of 
the Church's generosity to the fund, and it is to be 
noted have not interfered with the contributions 
to the Boards, all of whom report that they are 
without debt. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Wm. Henry ROBERTS, Treasurer. 



ADDKESS ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
FUND 

BY THE 

REV. MAECUS A. BEOWNSON, D. D., 

Chairman of the Committee. 



Me. Modeeatoe, Membees of the Geneeal 
Assembly and Peesbyteeians of Phila- 
delphia :— 

The course which the Twentieth Century Me- 
morial Fund of our Church has taken, thus far, has 
been precisely what the committee anticipated. 
It was to be expected that congregations laboring 
under the burden of debt, and fronting exacting 
mortgages which, like the tares of the parable, 
have grown in extent while men worked hard to 
have fields free from such encumbrances, and also 
while they slept, the mortgages knowing neither 
nights of slumber nor Sabbaths of worshipful rest — 
it was to be expected that congregations burdened 
and hindered by debt should seize upon the oppor- 
tunity presented by this proposed fund to become 
free in the glorious liberty of financial inde- 
pendence. 

219 



220 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

It was also to be looked for that congregations 
feeling the need of enlarging or improving the 
Houses of Praise and Prayer in which they have 
worshiped, or of the erection of new and more 
commodious edifices, in order to a larger work in 
the new century, should take advantage of the 
enthusiasm for giving, born of this great move- 
ment, to accomplish these much desired and most 
desirable objects. 

"We may give sincere and hearty thanks to the 
Head of the Church for these happy and hopeful 
conditions. Freedom from indebtedness means 
ultimately larger giving to benevolence, education, 
and missions, provided that further indebtedness be 
not incurred ; and our expression of gratitude will 
therefore be followed by the prayer that human 
wisdom and divine restraint may prevent such 
future complication. Surely the burned child will 
dread the fire. 

We may well render praise, also, for improved, 
enlarged and new houses of worship, in which the 
larger assemblies of joyous worshipers will become 
the more copious sources of cheerful beneficence 
which the Lord loves. 

Your committee would emphasize the call to all 
congregations still remaining in the unhappy 
bondage of the debtor, or hindered by inadequate 
facilities for worship and work, to follow the ex- 
ample of the joyous churches which, so early in the 
new century, have prepared themselves to enter into 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 221 

the wider sphere of influence and into the greater 
works of Christian love. 

Your committee, however, is by no means satis- 
fied with the achievements made along the lines 
indicated, nor with the beginnings of a larger and 
more adequate support of the great tasks belonging 
to the Church in its entirety. The moneys which 
have been given are simply straws showing the 
rising winds of benefactions, which shall carry for- 
ward the larger blessings which are within the 
power of the Church to bear to a waiting world. 

For the reason that this movement is in its in- 
cipiency, and requires the intelligent interest and 
the increasing inspiration and close care which will 
come from the continued guidance of the forces 
called into action, by the chief court of our Church, 
the committee asks the Assembly to prosecute the 
task through another year. 

Here, in the birthplace of American liberty, and 
on the spot w T here American Presbyterianism, so 
great a factor in our noble form of freedom, was 
organized, and here, at the first meeting of our Gen- 
eral Assembly in a new era so replete with oppor. 
tunity for achievement and so bright with promise, 
we may surely expect to see the Church we love 
stirred to the depths of its eager desire and de- 
termination to bless our land and the world, with 
greater works of Christian education, Christian be- 
nevolence and Christian missions, which, as thus far 
established by our organized agencies, have spread 



222 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

such happiness and hope, such comfort and con- 
solation, such truth and trust, near at hand and far 
afield. 

Strong emphasis must be laid upon the better 
endowment, and more adequate support of institu- 
tions and agencies, which have wrought such mag- 
nificent effects. They are not upstarts. They are 
in no sense parvenu. They are old, tried, proven 
forms of successful work for the advancement of 
the kingdom of Christ. They represent the highest 
wisdom, the most determined purpose, the most 
economical and effective manners of work, the 
noblest consecration, which God has been pleased 
to seal as approved with his abundant blessing. 

The appeal of the Twentieth Century Fund is 
particularly in behalf of the organized work of the 
Church at large. The local congregation is urged to 
become free and independent in its financial equip- 
ment, that it may contribute to the wider interests 
of Christ beyond its own borders. Individuals are 
called to consider as worthy of their gifts, Church 
Extension in cities, Synodical Home Missions, com- 
monly called Synodical Sustentation, the Christian 
College, independent of aid from the Board of Aid 
for Colleges, it may be, but still most dependent 
upon the liberality of appreciative Christian pa- 
trons, the Theological Seminary, of all our institu- 
tions of learning the most important to the welfare 
of the Church, houses of healing for the sick and 
the suffering, homes of comfort for the aged, the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 223 

orphaned and the destitute — the eight benevolent 
and missionary Boards of the Church, that these 
channels of blessing may be filled to the full with 
streams of truth and love and grace. 

We must educate — our ministers, our elders, our 
Sabbath-school teachers, our Christian workers. 
Mr. Bryce, in his work, entitled "The American 
Commonwealth," has written : " Nothing so strikes 
a stranger who visits American Universities and 
Colleges, as the ardor with which the younger gen- 
eration of this new land has thrown itself into 
study. This is greater than that found in Oxford 
or Cambridge, or in the Universities of Scotland. 
One is reminded of the scholars of the Renaissance 
flinging themselves into the rediscovered philology, 
or of the German Universities after the war of 
liberation. Nowhere in the world is there growing 
up such a multitude of intelligent, cultivated read- 
ers. A civilized society like this is so much vaster 
than any history knows of that one's imagination is 
staggered at the power for good or evil rising to 
higher levels year by year." 

We ask, will this new generation of American 
scholars be Christians ? From this new generation 
of scholars can we recruit the ranks of our ministry, 
and meet the newer and larger needs which press 
upon us ? Say what we may of other institutions, 
their traditions, their renown, their immense and 
invaluable services to civilization and to Christianity 
in general, the men who are preaching in our pul- 



224 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

pits, and the men and women who, from onr Pres- 
byterian point of view, are exerting the influence of 
educated minds upon their age, have been, for the 
most part, trained for their life work in our own 
colleges. We have a large share of the great work 
of education to do. Presbyterian ism has always 
been an earnest advocate of education, and its 
accomplishments in that line are among its chief 
glories. The present plea is not for exclusiveness 
but effectiveness. 

Most noble is the youngest of our Boards, which 
aids the young college and the academy in the 
struggle for proper maintenance. A perpetual 
blessing to the Church has been the Board which 
helps young men of ability and consecration to ob- 
tain full educational equipment for the exacting 
duties of the ministry. 

Let there be no retrogression in the new century ; 
rather let there be preeminent progression. And 
the crown of our system — the Theological Seminary 
— ought to be frequently, if not first, in our thoughts 
and in our plans. 

We must be benevolent. Christ is the head of our 
Church. Our Saviour healed, with gracious word 
and willing hand. We must build the hospital, 
train the nurse. The dogmatic Christianity of the 
seminary is completed by the practical relief and 
consolation of the hospital. 

Amidst the agonies of the Cross, the Eedeemer 
of men paused in the flow of his grief to provide 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 225 

a home on earth for her who gave him birth, until 
that time when she should be with him, forever, in 
the skies. We, ministering in his name, must give 
a home to those who " do his will " and are to him 
as " a sister, a brother, a mother," and who are, in 
old age or in bereft condition, homeless and des- 
titute. 

Words fail to express our obligation to the aged 
servants of Christ and the enfeebled and infirm, for 
whom the Church does care with tender thought, 
but who need, sorely need, far more than they now 
receive, while the increasing number of annuitants 
of the Board of Ministerial Eelief reduces, year by 
year, the small stipends on which they lean so grate- 
fully, so expectantly, as their only material staff in 
the valley of the shadows. 

We must he a Missionary Church. Our right to 
exist is involved in this. We believe in the glory 
of God as the chief end of man. " The whole world 
is to be filled with his glory." The greatness of 
the greatest work of the Church grows in our 
thoughts with each year of attempt and achieve- 
ment. On the bridge of the centuries, looking 
backward to review accomplishments, looking for- 
ward to see possibilities, we are enraptured. Diffi- 
culties can no longer deter. Disasters cannot dis- 
hearten. Determination dominates us. A century 
of organization will be followed by a century of 
vast achievement. And our determination is so 
confident, because above, about and beneath our 

15 



226 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

purpose is the unalterable and triumphant decree of 
the sovereign God — sovereign in grace, as in power. 
There is a divine logic of missions. The major 
premise in the commanding argument is the attitude 
of Him who gave his only begotten Son for a 
world's salvation. The minor premise is, a Church 
" willing in the day of his power." The conclu- 
sion is, "the fullness of the Gentiles," and u all 
Israel," "saved." 

Bearing our full share in the work of a world's 
redemption, we purpose maintaining God-approved 
plans for the evangelization of cities, of country 
districts, of the black belt in the Southland, of ex- 
ceptional populations of our country. We will 
erect more churches for struggling congregations ; 
we will gather into Bible schools the children of the 
missionary fields, and distribute the Bible and Chris- 
tian literature ; we will go into the vast regions be- 
yond the Father of Waters, where life is strenuous 
and sin is strong, and onward to the frozen North, 
and then turn to the islands of the southern seas, 
where the flag we love is now the pledge of free- 
dom, and the Cross we preach shall have fresh con- 
quests — and on, ever on, until we have done as 
much as in us is to reach, with the gospel of salva- 
tion, the last people and the last person thereof, on 
the face of the globe. 

These tasks of education, benevolence, and mis- 
sions, require money for their execution — much 
money — not meager but munificent amounts. If 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 227 

you ask why this exceptional effort is made just 
now, the answer is quickly forthcoming. 

Every institution, every Board connected with our 
Church, depending at all upon the yield of invested 
funds, has found itself leaning upon a rate of inter- 
est halved, while its opportunities and obligations 
have been doubled. 

Moreover, the historicity of such efforts in our 
Church gives warrant for this particular movement. 
"We have had frequent financial revivals, and, by the 
aid of these, the Church has advanced, under God, 
to her present position of power. 

Our appeal, in behalf of these great interests, at 
the opening of this new epoch, as the time oppor- 
tune for advance — our appeal is addressed to one 
million and seven thousand communicants, to two 
million five hundred thousand adherents of the Pres- 
byterian Church, and to one million and eighty-five 
thousand Sabbath-school scholars. Our appeal is 
to men and women of great wealth, who are 
Christ's disciples and bearers of the loved and hon- 
ored name, Presbyterian. Our appeal is to every 
church of our order, and every member of every 
church. Our appeal is to a communion which, dur- 
ing the century closed, poured out before the Lord, 
for education, benevolence and missions, eighty- 
seven million dollars, and to which the Lord gra- 
ciously added, by confession of faith, in that period, 
two million two hundred thousand souls. 

Well might our Church, so blessed with spiritual 



228 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

favor, so enriched by the treasures of earth which 
her members hold and control, inaugurate a mighty 
advance of her organized work with such a gift of 
gratitude as is so earnestly, so prayerfully requested, 
by the representatives of her vast enterprises. Well 
might this glorious day of review and outlook come 
to its close, ripen in its consummation, with the 
high and holy resolve to arise and heed this call. 



THE DUTY AND OPPORTUNITIES OF 

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 



BY THE 

Rev. SAMUEL J. NICCOLI^, D.D., LL. D. 



THE DUTY AND OPPOETUNITIES OF THE 

PEESBYTEEIAN CHUECH IN THE 

TWENTIETH CENTUEY 

BY THE 

Rev. SAMUEL J. NICCOLLS, D. D., LL. D. 



Fathers and Brethren : — 

It would be to our discredit as representatives of 
the Church of Jesus Christ, to ask on such an oc- 
casion as this, and at so late an hour in her history, 
"What is the supreme mission of the Church?" 
To confess that we had not yet discovered it, would 
be to proclaim ourselves unworthy of our position. 
It was declared long ago, and with such plainness of 
definition that there is no room for doubt or 
speculation concerning it. The divine Founder of 
the Church has said, " As thou hast sent me 
into the world even so have I also sent them into 
the world." The mission of Jesus Christ defines 
the mission of his Church. It is an unchangeable 
one, the same in the twentieth century that it was 
in the first ; and so it will continue while time lasts. 
The Church of the twentieth century, if true to 
Christ, has no new gospel to preach, no other 

231 



232 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

foundation to lay than that which has been laid, no 
other Book from which to teach men, than that in- 
spired and infallible one of which she has been the 
custodian for ages, and no other power by which 
to save men and subdue the nations, than that 
which comes from a crucified, but now risen and 
exalted, Saviour. She has no other work to ac- 
complish than that defined in our Lord's last 
command. 

But while the great mission of the Church re- 
mains the same, her opportunities for service and 
the corresponding special duties do not. With the 
changing times come new duties ; and there must 
be a wise discerning of the times by the followers 
of Christ if they would faithfully discharge their 
mission. That the new century has brought us 
face to face with new problems, new conditions of 
life, and changes in the world, which if they had 
been foretold to those who lived at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, would have appeared in- 
credible, is a fact so often dwelt upon that it has 
become commonplace. There is also, a growing 
conviction that still greater changes are near at 
hand. There is a concurrence of signs attesting 
this. As by some prophetic instinct, devout men 
feel that God is preparing a new and glorious 
revelation of his kingdom ; and that he is rallying 
the forces under his control for new conquests. It 
is a time of confusion and unrest, of breaking away 
from old customs and beliefs. Men are musing, 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 233 

searching after truth, and exploiting new opinions. 
They are casting aside old environments, challeng- 
ing old faiths, and testing all things. Social and 
political changes affecting the temporal destinies of 
one third of the human race have taken place be- 
fore our eyes with a rapidity that creates amaze- 
ment; and the end is not yet. Knowledge has 
broadened ; the discoveries of science have con- 
quered space and time and brought the ends of the 
earth together. There is no land of which we can 
say as in former centuries, it is remote ; no nation 
whose condition does not concern us. Trade and 
science in their work have confirmed a fact long 
ago proclaimed but dimly seen in the past, that 
God " hath made of one blood all nations of men for 
to dwell on all the face of the earth." We are 
realizing as never before the brotherhood of hu- 
manity, the solidarity of the race. No nation can 
live unto itself. It is in the midst of such condi- 
tions that we, as a Church, stand. What are the op- 
portunities and what is the duty, of the hour ? We 
must not arrogantly claim for ourselves a supreme 
position in the Church Universal, nor assume to 
direct and discharge all its ministries. We are only 
a part of it, a branch raised up as we believe for a 
special service ; and our history ought to interpret, 
at least in part, our special mission. There ought 
to be that in it which justifies our separate and dis- 
tinct organization, and warrants its continuance. 
If not, it is high time that we should abandon our 



234 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

claims and move for a dissolution. But we are 
not in doubt, nor do we come to the present hour 
dismayed, distracted, and uncertain, as to our mis- 
sion. One fact is evident beyond dispute; the 
Presbyterian Church has borne steadfast and un- 
compromising witness to the truth as we have 
found it in the word of God. She has been dis- 
tinguished as a doctrinal Church. She has fear- 
lessly written out her creed, large and full, that 
there might be no misunderstanding of her testi- 
mony; and she has maintained it at no small 
sacrifice. Discarding forms and rituals as of little 
value, and utterly rejecting the commandments and 
traditions of men, she has sought to set forth the 
doctrines taught in Holy Scripture. Whether her 
creed is the best that can be written, is not now the 
question ; but this much is certain, that among all 
the branches of the Church of Christ she has in- 
sisted most strenuously upon the supreme authority 
of the word of God, and has given to the world the 
most complete and orderly statement of its doc- 
trines. Eemembering the words of the great Head 
of the Church, that he came into the world to bear 
witness to the truth, she believes that one of the 
first duties of the Church is to teach men the 
testimony of Jesus Christ, and, with this conviction 
unchanged, she faces the world of the twentieth 
century. It is admitted that it is a time of rest- 
lessness, changing opinions, and unsettled beliefs. 
Multitudes, some with eagerness and some with the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 235 

accents of despair, are saying, " Who will show us 
any good?" But what is all this but an oppor- 
tunity to witness for the truth ! It is no time for 
silence, or for the casting away of sound doctrine, 
or for setting our sails to catch some breeze of 
popular favor. This confusion, this multiplication 
of fantastic notions in religion, this testing of 
creeds, is in one sense not an evil sign. Better this 
than apathy, or the complacent and unreasoning 
deadness of a superficial orthodoxy. John Milton 
said, "Where there is much desire to learn, there 
of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, 
many opinions ; for opinion in good men is but 
knowledge in the making." In a time of confusion 
and doubt we need most of all to hear the voice of 
certainty; the clear, strong, and conscience-com- 
pelling accent of the truth. The Church of Eome, 
ever on the alert, has sought to supply this need 
with her doctrine of papal infallibility. Have we 
any testimony to make ? If so, now is the hour to 
speak. Let us not mislead ourselves with the cry 
" work, work," and then in some quiet peaceful day 
settle our beliefs. No! the truth first, and the 
truth always. It is the instrument by which we 
must work, the sword by which we must conquer. 
The Church that the twentieth century needs, the 
one that is to be foremost in controlling its 
destinies, is the one that shall have the purest and 
plainest scriptural creed, and that will fearlessly 
and honestly preach it. 



236 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

I have said that our Church has been character- 
ized in the past as doctrinal, and this feature has 
been no small part of her strength and glory. 
Whatever truth we possess we must keep to the 
end. But if we have made any new discoveries of 
truth in the inexhaustible word of God, if we have 
obtained any broader and clearer views of divine 
teaching, it is equally our duty to proclaim that to 
the world. As faithful witnesses for Christ we 
must tell the whole truth as we know it, and in its 
right relations. Furthermore that truth must be 
expressed in adaptation to the needs of the times. 
There is no need to change our testimony in order 
to please men ; that would be to betray the truth ; 
but change in form is often required to meet the 
needs of men and of the times. 

Man's sin determined the form in which divine 
grace was revealed, and a sin-ruined humanity was 
the mold in which gospel redemption was cast. 
Just so credal statements, if they are to be service- 
able, must be framed in view of the needs and con- 
ditions of the times. The alignment of truth must 
change in its advancing warfare. The doctrines 
placed in the forefront at one time are not those 
that ought to occupy that critical place at another. 
A creed is not an unchangeable product, and, when 
it would take the place of the unchangeable word 
of God, when scholastic theology would make a 
palimpsest of Holy Scripture, and prevent further 
light breaking forth from its pages, it is high time 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 237 

for the Church to awake and to assert its freedom 
under its ancient charter. For myself, I hold that 
we have no reason to abandon the venerable Con- 
fession of Faith made by our fathers, but the rather 
to write it larger and clearer. By God's grace we 
know something they did not, or at least did not 
clearly express. A growing Church will not be 
marked by a shriveling creed, nor by one that in- 
cludes only the alphabet of the Christian faith ; but 
by a larger and growing testimony to the truth. 
There is such a thing as the development of doctrine 
in the consciousness of the Church. Change may 
be made from greatness to littleness ; but there is 
also a change from glory unto glory, which it is our 
privilege to make through the Spirit of God. 

As American citizens, we have a banner which 
none of us would ever wish to see changed. Its 
colors were caught from the pure heavens above 
us ; it is associated with all that is glorious in our 
country's history. It is the emblem of liberty, 
law and human brotherhood, the world over. It 
is the visible creed of the rights of man. It pro- 
claims the sovereignty of the people, the reign of a 
Christian democracy. The sight of it thrills our 
pulses, and sets our hearts to beating with emotions 
of loftiest patriotism. Under its folds we have 
liberty, peace, and security ; and palsied be the hand 
that would erase from it a single stripe or star. 
Yet could some patriot who helped to carry it from 
Boston to Yorktown now look upon it, he would 



238 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

say, "It is the same dear old flag, but I see that 
it has changed ! The field, the field is not the 
same ! " Yes, truly ; there is more of heaven's con- 
stellations in it, a greater splendor of the stars. It 
tells of a wider sovereignty, of new conquests, and 
of increased multitudes gathered under its protect- 
ing folds. It is the old banner of the past and yet 
it tells of progress. So let it be with that old blue 
banner which symbolizes our faith, the banner of 
the covenant theology. Let it be unchanged, yet 
changed ; let there be more of heaven's grace in it, 
a brighter luster of holy truth, a wider sweep of its 
folds, and then let us bear it to the ends of the 
earth for a testimony unto Christ our Lord. 

But we owe also the duty of service. That this 
duty inheres in the very nature of the Church needs 
no argument in a presence like this. Our Lord 
came " not to be ministered unto but to minister, 
and to give his life a ransom for many " ; and his 
ministry, if we are true to him, is to be perpetuated 
by us. It is also so clearly defined that no one who 
reads the gospel with an open mind need misunder- 
stand it. That gospel bids us feed the hungry, 
clothe the naked, minister to the sick, befriend the 
poor, and lift up the fallen. It teaches us to regard 
the temporal welfare of men and to seek the good 
of society. It lays its hand upon all human rela- 
tions and pursuits to purify and ennoble them. 
What is called civilization is, in its last analysis, ap- 
plied religion ; and the nature of the religion de- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 239 

termines the nature of the civilization. But beyond 
this and superior to it, is the ministry of the gospel 
with reference to the higher, the spiritual and eter- 
nal interests of men. Its effects in what is called 
Christian civilization, manifold and beneficent as 
they are, are only its by-products. It seeks as its 
chief end the redemption of man from sin and his 
exaltation as a child of God to eternal glory. For 
this sublime and world — embracing service, God has 
endowed his Church not only with the supernatural 
and all-essential gift of the Holy Spirit, and his 
written word of truth, but also with subordinate 
and personal gifts such as mental endowments, in- 
telligence, scientific knowledge, wealth, and inven- 
tions. In one respect the Church is no stronger 
now than it was in the first century, when a little 
company of disciples went forth to conquer the 
world with no other endowment than the might of 
the Holy Spirit, and the simple gospel message ; 
and these must ever be the secret of her strength. 
Forgetting them, and relying on her numbers, her 
wealth, her institutions, and her intelligence, she is 
destined to disastrous defeat. But God has been 
pleased to grant additional gifts for the ministry of 
healing and helpfulness to men ; gifts which are 
better in their use than those miraculous ones 
which characterized the apostolic age. The wonder- 
worker is not necessarily a better man through the 
exercise of miraculous power. Our Lord has told 
us that many shall say unto him at the last day, 



240 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

" Lord, Lord, have we not cast out devils in thy 
name, and in thy name done many wonderful 
works ? " To whom he shall say, " I never knew 
you." But the man who consecrates and uses his 
gifts of intelligence or wealth, or power to the 
service of Christ is by that very ministry made a 
better man. Such service demands self-sacrifice 
and that is the royal way to advancement. 

Let us then consider the condition of our Church 
with reference to these special endowments. What 
a contrast between our position to-day and that of 
our fathers who met in this city a little over one 
hundred years ago ! They were few in numbers, 
we are many; they were weak in earthly re- 
sources, we are strong; they were poor, we are 
rich ; they were limited in their opportunities, 
ours are boundless and open to the ends of the 
earth. Their facilities for labor were few, ours are 
great and multiplied : books, schools, colleges, print- 
ing presses, organized institutions, travel made 
easy, time and space conquered, all that science has 
discovered, powers of nature waiting like swift and 
mighty angels to do our bidding — all these are at 
our service. Such is our endowment, as we stand, 
at the threshold of the new century, and surely it 
does not require the wisdom of a sage, or the fore- 
sight of a prophet, to interpret its significance. We 
must remember the peril as well as the greatness of 
our position. History shows us how nations have 
advanced to a high degree of civilization, power 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 241 

and wealth, and then, their meridian passed, began 
to decline, and at last perished in dishonor. It is 
usually said that wealth and luxury destroyed 
them ; but the deeper reason is, that they were 
faithless to the divine law of true progress. Not 
their wealth and power, but their selfishness, led to 
their decline. Unwilling to share with others their 
high privileges, they lost the power which makes a 
nation great, and which extends and perpetuates its 
life. The same law applies to the Church. There 
is a notable illustration of it in the history of 
Israel. They were raised up and richly dowered, 
not for their own sakes, or that they might hold a 
monopoly of special blessings, but for the sake of 
others. Through them all nations were to be 
blessed. But they became exclusive, selfish, glory- 
ing in themselves and despising others. Forgetful 
of their high mission, their strength and glory 
passed from them, and others were called to take 
their place. So will it be with us as a Church, if we 
fail to have a sincere and heart-controlling interest 
in the great mission to which Christ has called us. 
A selfish Church glorying in its own greatness is 
already under a curse. The moment we begin to 
boast of ourselves as the elect of God and forget 
others, that moment our decline begins. The 
enormous wealth of the present time in which our 
Church has so large a share, and the very civiliza- 
tion which the gospel has helped to create un- 
doubtedly have brought with them corresponding 

16 



242 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

perils; but the way of escape for us is not to 
renounce wealth, and to lead society in the name of 
Christianity back into primitive conditions and the 
limitations of poverty, but the rather by increased 
consecration to Christ and more unselfish living, to 
use all our abundance for the establishment of the 
kingdom of heaven on earth. 

As to our opportunities, they are so manifest that 
he must be blind indeed who cannot see them. 
But why should I weary you with a list of things 
to be done ? Who does not know that advances 
and achievements are possible to the Church now, 
which were not so a hundred years ago, nor even 
at any previous time since the Christian centuries 
began. The highways are prepared, every barrier 
is thrown down, every heathen nation on the globe 
is open to the labors of the Christian missionary. 
How significant in this respect is the condition of 
China, representing one quarter of the population 
of the whole world. Her swarming multitudes are 
stirred as never before. They are angry, enraged, 
humiliated, despairing, longing, but they are think- 
ing and that means much for the future. It is 
God's ploughing time there, and now is our oppor- 
tunity to cast the seed. How mistakenly do those 
read the history of God's dealings in the past who 
tell us that, since our missionaries have been mur- 
dered, and thousands of Christian converts have bap- 
tized the soil of China with their blood, since our 
mission stations have been burned with fire and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 243 

the labor of years has disappeared, since foreign 
aggression has aroused the hatred of the people and 
stirred up their prejudices to an unwonted degree 
of violence, our opportunity for the evangelization 
of China for the present at least is lost. Was it so 
in Syria, when the infant Church at Jerusalem was 
scattered abroad by persecution ; and when bigotry, 
hate, and malice, pursued them to distant cities ? 
Was it so in the Koman Empire when the power of 
the emperors and the prejudices and fanaticism of 
the populace were united to crush the Church ? 
Did she then, while her martyrs were dying by the 
thousands in the arena, lose her opportunity to 
conquer Kome? Was it so in India when the 
storm of revolt and religious fanaticism swept over 
it like a tropical hurricane, and left our mission 
stations in ruins ? Were the gates of opportunity 
closed there because of the martyrdom of some of 
the noblest of our missionaries ? 

What do our missionaries, who having passed 
through their baptism of fire and blood still live, 
say with reference to the outlook in China ? Do 
they proclaim the cause lost and stand terrified 
and unnerved saying, " Send us where you will but 
do not bid us return to a hopeless field to labor 
in face of obstacles that can not be overcome " ? 
They have suffered much from the revilings and 
slanders of those who call themselves Christians, 
but no one yet has dared to dishonor them by 
putting such words on their lips. 



244 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

Equally significant in opportunity, is what is 
called our home field. In the mysterious provi- 
dence of God, possessions undreamed of have come 
under the sovereignty of the Eepublic ; and, what- 
ever our courts may decide with reference to the 
constitution following the flag, one thing is cer- 
tain, the gospel must go with it if our free institu- 
tions are to be successfully planted among the sub- 
ject races. Without it no laws, no constitution, can 
lift them up into the high state of freemen. As a 
Christian people we are especially under obligation 
to give to those who have come under our care the 
very best that we possess, and woe be to us if we 
fail in our duty. We must gird ourselves for the 
work of a true expansion, or else what we have 
gained by the sword will result in our shame and 
ruin. All branches of the Church in America 
have an interest in this work, but upon no one is 
the obligation more distinct and imperative than 
upon us as Presbyterians. 

Ours, historically, is the established Church of 
the Eepublic, established not by but in her laws, 
her constitution, and her form of government. 
The genius of Presbyterianism is the genius of Ee- 
publicanism. The ideal social state, the democracy 
of the future will not be one ruled by a hierarchy, 
but one in which all are kings and priests unto God. 

But no view of our position as a Church at this 
critical time would be complete if it did not embrace 
our relations to men and society in our native land. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 245 

Here in this land of ours, which God in his provi- 
dence has so strangely exalted and placed in the 
forefront among the nations, are to be solved the 
problems that vitally concern the advancement of 
the kingdom of God ; and here we must find our 
opportunities for highest service. Opportunities 
are the angels that wait on duty. Sometimes they 
come clothed with such splendor and beauty that 
we are eager to follow them. Again, they come in 
plain everyday garb so that we scarcely heed 
them ; and still again they come in such dread array 
that they terrify us and we are ready to flee. They 
are robed as perils, they seem to threaten us, and 
we call them dangers. We must distinguish be- 
tween our facilities and our opportunities. The 
physician's instruments, his medicines, and his skill, 
are his facilities ; but when the plague comes with 
its terrors, and the sick and the suffering lie in his 
pathway, there is his opportunity. Discipline, alert- 
ness of movement, and improved weapons, are an 
army's facilities ; but when the foe with uplifted 
banners and advancing columns confronts it, there 
is its opportunity. So with us; what are called 
perils to society are in a true sense our opportuni- 
ties. The perils of wealth and of the slums, of grow- 
ing vice, immorality, ignorance and superstition, 
of anarchy and discontent among the poor, and 
greed among the rich, of an education that is 
godless, and of a gross materialism that is blind to 
the real good of life, — all these are manifest. They 



246 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

threaten us, and they must be met and overcome if 
the new century is to mark an advance for 
humanity. We are beginning to see as never be- 
fore that the gospel has something to do with 
society, and that if it cannot be eyes to the blind, 
help to the needy, protection to the oppressed, and 
bring peace and comfort to all men here, it will 
not commend itself to them as having the promise 
of the life which is to come. For this work we 
have as a Church, a richness of facilities in organi- 
zation, wealth, knowledge, numbers, and position ; 
but are we alive to our opportunities ? Have we 
not been more content with our privileges than we 
have been eager to minister to others ? The masses 
of the people, and especially the world of labor 
estranged from our Church, misunderstanding us, 
and misled by a Christless gospel, proclaim that 
something is wrong. Serious thinkers are be- 
ginning to realize that there must be some new 
adjustment or adaptation of our Christian forces, 
or, at least, that a new enthusiasm for service must 
be awakened among us, or we will be left in 
the rear, and others will be called of God to take 
our place and win the crown of the overcomers. 
Between atheistic anarchism on one side, which is 
individualism gone mad, and pantheistic communism 
on the other, which would rob the individual of his 
rights and merge all into a common life, a Church 
like ours should stand witnessing to the true and 
divine order of society. She should proclaim, as she 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 247 

has done in the past, the sacredness of the individ- 
ual and his freedom under God, and at the same 
time the brotherhood of men and their equality as 
the children of God. But to do this she must like 
her Lord, be willing to live with the poor and to 
gain their confidence by her unselfish services. If 
other Churches build Christian schools and colleges 
and universities, erect hospitals and asylums, send 
missionaries and deaconesses to the destitute and 
lowly, and preach the gospel to the poor, while we 
stand idly by boasting of our past, to them will be 
given the glory of saving our land for Christ ; while 
upon us will be the curse of Meroz. We may well 
dread for ourselves that conservatism of material 
prosperity which chills sympathy and benumbs the 
conscience. 

In the last century we yielded, to our hurt, to the 
blighting influences of human slavery. Now the 
commercialism of the age threatens and infects us. 

We must get rid of it, and in the spirit of self- 
sacrifice and self-denial go out to serve our fellow- 
men. Let us remember that in all the past the 
Church has conquered by her martyrs, and not by 
her millionaires. Her prayers, tears, and sacrifices, 
have been her power. 

We are tempted at an hour like this, to engage in 
prevision ; or at least to dream of what the new 
century will bring to the race. But the curtain 
that hides the future will not rise at our bidding. 
This much however we know, for it is the assurance 



248 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

which the cherished faith of our Church brings us ; 
God's eternal purpose in Christ Jesus runs through 
the ages, and history is the revelation of it. It can- 
not be defeated. This century, like those which 
preceded it, will help to carry us on to the glorious 
consummation. The position which we occupy in 
this age-long movement is a most solemn and re- 
sponsible one. We are the heirs of the past. 
Apostles, martyrs, confessors, saintly men and 
women who have toiled for the salvation of others, 
and who have borne heroic witness to the truth, 
intrust their gains to us to transmit them to the 
future. It is given to us by our indifference to 
retard, or by our fidelity to hasten, the coming of 
our Lord. Certainly it is no time for discourage- 
ment or lamentation. Jesus Christ was an optimist 
with regard to his w r ork. With a world in dark- 
ness round him, with a Church that would not 
receive him, with few followers, and one of them a 
traitor, with the shameful death of the cross before 
him, and the powers of darkness assailing him, he 
said, " this gospel of mine shall be preached among 
all nations for a witness unto them." " Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." In view of all that has occurred since then, 
and of the outlook given to us in the dawning of the 
twentieth century, can any one of his followers be 
pessimistic ? Nay, rather let us shout in the as- 
surance of hope, and gird ourselves for the service 
that awaits us. We need to be more hopeful, more 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 249 

confident, and more enthusiastic, for we follow a 
leader who knows no defeat. Let us here, round 
the ancient altars of our faith, be anointed afresh 
for our work. 

"Ours the needed Truth to speak, 
Right the wrong and raise the weak ; 
Ours to make earth's desert glad, 
In its Eden greenness clad ; 
Ours to work as well as pray, 
Clearing thorny wrongs away, 
Plucking up the weeds of sin, 
Letting Heaven's warm sunshine in ; 
Watching on the hills of Faith, 
Listening what the Spirit saith ; 
Catching gleams from temple-spires, 
Hearing notes from angel choirs ; 
Like the seer of Patmos gazing, 
On the glory downward blazing j 
Till, upon earth's grateful sod, 
Rests the city of our God." 



"FELLOW-WORKERS UNTO THE 
KINGDOM OF GOD" 

Colossians 4 : 11. 



SERMON BY THE 

Rev. CHARLES ANDREWS DICKEY, D. D., 

Retiring Moderator 



"FELLOW-WORKERS UNTO THE KINGDOM 
OF GOD " 

Colossians 4 : 11. 

seemon by the 

Rev. CHARLES ANDREWS DICKEY, D. D., 

Retiring Modeeatoe 



In this letter to the Colossians Paul identifies 
the redeemed Church with the promised kingdom 
of God. 

" The saints and faithful brethren in Christ which 
are at Colosse," are to be delivered from the 
power of darkness, and to be translated into the 
kingdom of God's dear Son. These heirs of the 
kingdom are described as those who have redemp- 
tion and the forgiveness of sin, through the blood 
of the first-born Son, and image of the invisible 
God, creator of all things, including all thrones, and 
all dominions, and all principalities, and all powers. 
And the crowning glory, the chief expression of the 
preeminence of Christ, is declared to be that he is 
" the head of the body," and that the body is the 
redeemed Church. 

Making mention of other churches to which he 

253 



254 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

had ministered, and of other ministers who had 
shared his labors, Paul, with the redeemed Church 
and the kingdom of God closely associated in his 
thought and service, says, These are " fellow- workers 
unto [or toward] the kingdom of God." 

It has seemed to me fitting to address you, the 
representatives of the Church, as " fellow-workers 
unto the kingdom of God." Let us make the king- 
dom of God our meditation and confer together 
about the service which we may render to realize 
the King's wish that the kingdom may come. 

The kingdom of God occupies a prominent place 
in the Holy Scriptures. The spirit of all history, 
and more especially of sacred history, is the testi- 
mony of the kingdom of God. The Bible is the 
handbook of the kingdom of God. Men are only 
mentioned, and events are only recorded, because of 
their connection with the kingdom of God. The 
songs that make the Bible a poem and an anthem 
of triumph, the prayers that express the longings of 
souls and the reverence of faith, the dreams and 
visions that spread their supernatural light from 
Abraham's tent door to the retirement of Arabia, 
and from Jacob's pillow of stone to the solitude of 
Patmos, the mountain of fire that lighted the 
wilderness, the dazzling ritual that prefigured the 
Cross, the anthem of angels that announced the 
Advent, the tragedy of Calvary that consummated 
the Atonement, and the Easter dawn that confirmed 
the revelation and redemption of the kingdom of 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 255 

God, these together make the Holy Scripture the 
constitution, the revelation, and the history of a 
kingdom which has its beginning in the eternal 
purposes of a sovereign God, and we have the as- 
surance of God that when the kingdom has been 
finally established, it shall never end. 

The record of Christ's ministry, the most of his 
discourses and pictures, and every event of his life, 
from his humble birth and the adoration of kings, 
to the departure from Olivet, under the escort of 
angels, and back to abandoned glory to complete 
the gift of the kingdom to the Father, all this is 
the testimony of the kingdom of God. 

When the amazed apostles turned their faces 
from the cloud that carried away their King, and 
in obedience to his command began the subjugation 
of the world to his scepter, they proclaimed the 
promise of the King's return to be crowned by the 
universe of God, as " Lord of all." 

Bible students have given great prominence to 
the study of this kingdom, which occupies so con- 
spicuous a place in the "Word of God, and recent 
study has been devoted with great diligence to this 
subject. I shall not attempt to contribute anything 
unfamiliar, but this kingdom of God seemed an ap- 
propriate theme for this significant time. We are 
looking backward to discover possible progress, and 
we are looking forward to gain inspiration for bet- 
ter service, and therefore, charged with a divine 
commission, entrusted with the Word that contains 



256 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

our orders and reveals the " great mystery concern- 
ing Christ and the Church," I thought it fitting to 
present for your consideration this theme of revela- 
tion, and to address you as " fellow-workers unto 
the kingdom of God." 

The kingdom of God may be considered in four 
general aspects. First, as the revelation of an 
eternal plan and purpose of God, by whose power 
and for whose glory all things exist. 

Second, as eetaeded by the unwillingness of 
those who should be the subjects of this supreme 
and rightful Euler. 

Third, as eedeemed from sin by a plan of love 
and grace, devised and executed by the offended 
Sovereign; and, finally, the kingdom eestobed, 
triumphantly established over all resistance, the 
blessedness of its subjects, and the glory of its King. 

This kingdom, the primary purpose of which is 
the glory and praise of God, has its existence, abso- 
lutely, in the will of God and by the decree and 
power of God. David's prayer on the occasion of 
giving up his throne to Solomon, fully expresses 
this sovereign sway of God. 

" Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, 
and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty : 
for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is 
thine ; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art 
exalted as head above all. 

" Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou 
reignest over all ; and in thine hand is power and 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 257 

might ; and in thine hand it is to make great, and 
to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, 
we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name." 

The Psalms abound in such confession and praise. 

" The kingdom is the Lord's : and he is the gov- 
ernor among the nations." 

" The Lord hath prepared his throne in the 
heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all." 

For any creacure to dispute the authority of God 
is treason, and to refuse obedience and willing serv- 
ice is rebellion. Therefore, to comprehend the na- 
ture of the divine kingdom and the relation of 
all other beings to the Supreme Being, we must 
observe that the kingdom of God is rooted and 
grounded in creation. God's right to rule is founded 
on his relation to all things as their Creator. Every- 
thing must be subservient to the will of its maker. 
Everything that the omnipotence of God makes 
possible, and everything that the will of God re- 
gards desirable, must be included in the kingdom of 
God. The absolute dominion of God has its foun- 
dation in the absolute ownership of God. To the 
crown of creation, the perfect man, God delegated 
dominion over the creatures beneath him. But 
man lost his dominion by losing his perfection and 
by putting himself in opposition to the will and 
dominion of God. 

The order of creation suggests the purpose of 
God to glorify himself in a kingdom in which man, 
made in his own image, after his own likeness, 

17 



258 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

whose life was the Spirit of God, should be the con- 
spicuous subject. Having " called light from the 
darkness that covered the face of the deep," having 
spread the firmament and gathered the waters, hav- 
ing given the continents their form, having filled 
the earth with sustenance, having lighted man's 
abode by night and by day and made it fully 
ready for his dominion and blessedness, God estab- 
lished his kingdom and bade his subject to occupy 
it for his own gain and blessedness, and for the 
glory of his Creator. The only condition of occu- 
pancy was obedience. The will of the sovereign 
and holy Creator must be the law of the sub- 
ject, for though a son of God, bearing the image 
of his Father, the creature could have no right, 
no liberty, not in harmony with the will of the 
Sovereign for whose glory the kingdom was es- 
tablished. 

But just as true, the sovereign must receive an 
obedience springing from the full and loving con- 
sent of his subjects. God could not be satisfied 
with slaves for subjects. Loyalty must spring from 
love, the subjects must be free and willing, and find 
their consent and obedience in perfect confidence. 
The Sovereign set life and death before his subjects 
and left them free to choose. Adam might have 
been the representative of a race of kings, but he 
listened to the enemy of God, disobeyed God, and 
opened his eyes on a flaming sword that closed the 
gate of life ; and realized that " sin had entered into 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 259 

the world and death by sin," and that he repre- 
sented a race of slaves. 

God's plan of love was frustrated. His guilty 
subject was in rebellion. Darkness, deeper than 
the chaos out of which light had been called, en- 
veloped creation, and the murder and corruption, 
and evil of every sort, that hurried humanity to 
destruction and grieved a righteous God, thwarted 
the purpose of God and his kingdom on earth, for 
mankind seemed a failure. The carnal mind be- 
came enmity against God, and the wild, downward 
rush of fallen nature brought mankind to such a 
state that God, in righteous wrath, was compelled 
to wash the polluted earth with a flood, reserving a 
single family for the preservation of his kingdom. 

In the family of Noah, God kept his kingdom of 
grace, shortly to be more plainly revealed. When 
God banished his rebellious subjects and closed the 
gate of his kingdom, he gave them a strange 
promise to keep alive their hope. " The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head." It was a 
dim ray of light in the darkness, but later revela- 
tions enlarged and confirmed the promise. Silent 
centuries elapsed, when suddenly the silence is 
broken by the voice of an offended, loving, patient, 
God. The crash of the fall could not prevent the 
plans and purposes of the grace of God. In 
eternity, before creation or fall, God devised a 
scheme of grace by which the kingdom should rise 
out of the ruin of sin, and the subjects of grace es- 



260 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

cape the shadows of death. God waited until his 
new representative was ready to receive his revela- 
tion of grace and transmit it to the heirs of re- 
demption. Against the background of many cen- 
turies of darkness stands the most majestic figure, 
save the Son of God, that appears in the race that 
God's grace would redeem. The son of Terah is 
the shadow of the Son of God. What experiences 
and visions and dreams may have filled the seventy- 
five years of life spent in his own land, and among 
his own kindred, we are not told, but we know 
that when God called Abraham " To go out into a 
place, which he should after receive for an inherit- 
ance, he obeyed, and he went out, not knowing 
whither he went." " For he looked for a city," a 
kingdom " which hath foundations, whose builder 
and maker is God." 

The first step of " the friend of God " manifested 
the obedience that might have saved the kingdom 
in creation, and the faith that was to be the condi- 
tion of the kingdom of grace. The reverence of 
the race has confirmed the election of God, and the 
three religions which represent the living God, and 
confess his sovereignty, honor alike the memory 
and the headship of Abraham. By the choice of 
this one man, by covenant and promise, by a trial 
of faith that strangely suggests the Holy Temple 
and the Holy Cross by the nearness of Isaac's altar 
to them both, by a trial of faith that strangely sug- 
gests the Atonement, God brings this kingdom of 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 261 

grace, out of the chaos of sin and death, to be fore- 
shadowed for centuries, but in the fullness of time 
to be established on the earth by the King in person, 
and to be extended through a redeemed Church 
until it represented universal empire and the undis- 
puted reign of God. 

The descendants of Abraham, keeping the cove- 
nants and promises, and living in communion with 
the living God, who had entrusted his kingdom to 
their keeping, are driven by want into the bondage 
of Egypt, and by the heel of oppression, the family, 
growing to a nation, is hardened into a courage 
that should conquer freedom and plant the kingdom 
of God among the kingdoms of men. 

While the people grew by suffering, God was 
training a leader and a lawgiver in Midian. Ban- 
ished from Egypt, Moses found courage to return 
and boldly proclaim the message of God at Pha- 
raoh's throne. " Let my people go that they may 
serve me." Kesistance was overcome by judg- 
ments, the people of God, who had become a nation, 
crossed the sea that buried their oppressors and met 
their King at Sinai, ready to proclaim the laws of 
the kingdom of God. 

The Mosaic period of the kingdom of God is full 
of significance and suggestion. It marks the con- 
stitution of the kingdom. The Supreme Euler pro- 
claims the laws of his kingdom. The conditions 
that make for righteousness are declared with great 
exactness. The relations of subjects to their Sover- 



262 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

eign, and of subjects one with another, are definitely 
fixed and guarded by laws. A code of morals is 
given which would insure perfection by its complete 
observance. The proclamation of Sinai is a plain 
declaration that the kingdom of God is to be a 
kingdom of righteousness. 

But how is righteousness to be attained ? How 
are poor, wayward, wicked men to please God with 
perfect righteousness ? Does God mean to mock 
the hopes of struggling humanity by making im- 
possible conditions of entrance into his everlasting 
kingdom ? 

The institution of the passover before the 
exodus, and the prominence given to the cere- 
monial law, answer the question for the love and 
grace of God. The book of the law consists mainly 
of directions to the Cross, of foreshadowings of the 
atoning death, which is to be accomplished as the 
kingdom of God progresses. Feasts and offerings 
and sacrifices, a tribe of priests to insure the letter 
of the law, these, set forth with marvelous minute- 
ness, significantly proclaimed at the constitution of 
the kingdom that it is a kingdom of grace and not 
a kingdom of merit, a kingdom of faith and not a 
kingdom of works. These offerings and sacrifices, 
in themselves of no avail, the blood of which could 
not wash away sin, only suggested the blood of 
sprinkling that would speak the better things, 
promised and hoped for in the kingdom of God. 
Moses interpreted the ceremonial law when he de- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 263 

clared " The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a 
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, 
like unto me ; unto him ye shall hearken." 

Thus equipped, Abraham's family left the wilder- 
ness and, as a chosen nation, took possession of the 
promised land. The nation and the Church were 
one. The same laws regulated citizenship in the 
nation and membership in the Church. Israel, 
among surrounding nations, was intended to be the 
leaven of the kingdom in the midst of a lost hu- 
manity. To use a striking figure of an eminent 
writer, " Israel was God's river flowing on to make 
the whole earth glad, and the wicked, worldly 
empires, through which it flowed, were but stag- 
nant morasses and pools." Defections and defeats, 
with occasional reforms and victories under loyal 
leaders, bring the chosen nation, the representative 
of the kingdom of God, to face the question of a 
visible king. A visible kingdom, as it appeared to 
Israel, not yet able to realize the spiritual character 
of the kingdom of God, required a visible king. In 
wrath God abdicated his throne and allowed Israel 
to choose a king. The tragedy of Saul was the 
calamity of Israel. Then God condescended to 
name a man after his own heart, and the throne 
of David was the glory of Israel and the reign of 
David was the glory of God. David's reign was a 
prophecy. David was eminently a type of Christ. 
He recognized himself as reigning in the stead of 
his greater Son. The kingdom of God as related 



264 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

to the person of Jesus Christ, finds continual sug- 
gestion in the reign of David. The Psalmist of 
Israel deserves the title, Psalmist of the kingdom 
of God. In the name of Christ he challenges all 
enemies to oppose his kingdom. 

1 1 Why rage the heathen, and vain things 

Why do the people mind ? 
Kings of the earth do set themselves, 

And princes are combined 
To plot against the Lord and his 

Annointed, saying thns, 
Let us asunder break their bands, 

And cast their cords from us. 
He that in heaven sits shall laugh, 
The Lord shall scorn them all." 

This deep vein of devotion, and loyalty, and con- 
fidence regarding the triumph of the kingdom of 
God, runs through the Book of Psalms, and par- 
ticularly characterizes those psalms which prophesy 
and praise the Messiah. 

But the glory of David departed. A divided 
kingdom, scattered tribes, and bitter defeats at the 
hands of enemies, sadly retarded the kingdom of 
God. The failure of royalty, the impossibility of 
putting the kingdom of God in the keeping of 
human kings, brought conditions which the plans 
of God met, with other seers of the kingdom and 
other seekers after God. The dynasty of prophets 
insured two significant developments. Not only 
did the prophets restrain and rebuke kings, who 
disregarded the sovereignty of God, and the right- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 265 

eousness and blessedness of their subjects, but they 
were given sight to see the glory of the coming 
kingdom, wisdom to discern its spiritual character, 
and, above all, an acquaintance with the holy, 
heavenly Person who was to come and establish 
the kingdom, and in and through whom the king- 
dom was to be revealed and finally triumphantly 
restored. 

"When Israel wept by the rivers of Babylon, and 
mourned the captivity that seemed the end of hope, 
they gave better heed to the teachings of their 
prophets. Away from the holy temple which they 
reverenced and from the holy city which kept 
everything sacred pertaining to the worship and 
kingdom of God ; separated from their rituals that 
seemed so essential to acceptance with God, their 
spiritual sense was quickened by their bitter dis- 
tress, and they were brought to realize the spiritual 
character of the kingdom of God. In touch with 
sad, lost men, who were not Israelites, they began 
to understand that the kingdom of God was not 
confined to Judaea, but that Judasa was a center, 
from which it was God's purpose to influence and 
mold surrounding nations and bring them, by his 
grace, into his eternal kingdom. 

A distinguished writer, referring to the spiritual 
and universal character of the kingdom of God, as 
set forth in the teachings of the prophets, says : 
"The formation of a spiritual community in the 
days of the prophets, was a new thing in the his- 



266 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

tory of religion. Till then no one had dreamed of 
a fellowship of faith, disassociated from national 
form, maintained without the exercise of ritual 
services, bound together by faith in the Divine 
Word alone. It was the birth of the conception 
of the Church, the first step in the emancipation 
of spiritual religion from the form of political life." 

Daniel describes, with peculiar clearness, the re- 
lation of the kingdom of God to the kingdoms of 
men. Summoned by a restless king, both to recall 
and to interpret a dream that had disturbed him, 
Daniel, informed by God, foretold the destruction 
of successive earthly kingdoms and declared that 
the stone " cut out without hands," which became 
a great mountain was the symbol of the kingdom 
which the God of heaven would set up, which should 
never be destroyed, but stand forever. 

With what sublime imagery, and how frequently, 
does Isaiah describe the triumph of Christ and the 
Church, and the final glorious restoration of the 
kingdom of God. But I would emphasize more 
particularly the prophetic association of a suffering 
King with the triumphs of the kingdom of God. 
The person of Christ, unique, alone, transcendent, 
stands out in prophetic vision the essence and center 
and determining influence in the establishment of 
the kingdom of God. " The testimony of Jesus is 
the spirit of prophecy." The consciousness of the 
redemption of the kingdom by the life of the King, 
is more or less apparent in every prophetic utter- 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 267 

ance concerning the kingdom and the King. The 
strange dual nature, that comes nearer, but remains 
a mystery, in the gospels, is the continued theme of 
prophecy. In this dual nature, the King and the 
subject mysteriously meet. " What the law could 
not do, in that it was weak through the flesh," viz. : 
establish a kingdom of righteousness, God reveals 
his purpose of doing by " sending his own Son in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and by a sacrifice for sin, 
condemned sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of 
the law might be fulfilled." The " Wonderful, the 
mighty God, the Prince of Peace," is " the man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief." Immanuel is 
the wounded One, the bruised, the despised, the re- 
jected, the Lamb brought to the slaughter. This is 
the mystery of godliness, the kingdom that sin 
made the kingdom of death, redeemed back, and 
made a kingdom of life by the grace of the Sover- 
eign, expressed in a willing sacrifice of himself, in 
the actual death of the Cross. 

The Atonement is a vivid illustration of the cost 
of the kingdom and of life, in the experience of 
every one who passes from death unto life. Christ 
declares " The kingdom is in you." Eedemption is 
individual. The struggle, and temptation, and re- 
sistence, and sacrifice, the war in the soul between 
flesh and spirit, illustrate in every redeemed life the 
conflict by which the kingdom of God, and of 
righteousness, and of the Spirit, triumphs over the 
kingdom of this world, the kingdom of the flesh. 



268 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

The center of the kingdom of God is the Cross of 
Jesus Christ. Around the Cross eternities revolve. 
Calvary marks the spot, the battlefield, whose 
victory restored the kingdom of God. The fruits 
of the victory are being gathered as the centuries 
roll, and " when the end comes the conqueror will 
deliver the whole kingdom that he purchased with 
his blood, to the Father," and the coronation song 
is already written, " Thou art worthy . . . for 
thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy 
blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, 
and nation. . . . "Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. . . . 
Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto 
him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb 
forever and ever." 

The proclamations of the herald of Christ, the 
teachings of Christ himself, and the faith in which 
the apostles went everywhere preaching the gospel 
of the kingdom, confirm the prophetic visions of the 
kingdom of God. 

Between Malachi and the ministry of Christ 
there is the silence of four centuries. Christ and 
his herald found dull ears for the reception of their 
message. " A few feared the Lord and spake one 
to another." A remnant of seekers after God, and 
fellow-workers toward the kingdom, were ready for 
the message and for service. The voice in the 
wilderness renewed the call of priests and prophets 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 269 

to repentance. Christ entered his ministry with 
full consciousness of his authority, and with full 
knowledge of the death which he must suffer to 
establish the kingdom of God. The boy knew his 
Father's business and devoted himself to the work 
of the King. The model prayer of Christ makes the 
kingdom the first desire. The person of Christ 
confirmed the description of the prophets. Jesus 
Christ not only assured the kingdom, he was the 
kingdom. His life was the model of the kingdom. 
To be in the kingdom was to be in Christ. To be 
of the kingdom was to be like Christ. We have 
the fatherhood of God, only through the brother- 
hood of Christ. Moral and spiritual sonship was 
lost in the wreck of sin. Our new sonship is our 
regeneration by the spirit and the grace of God. 
Believers, redeemed by grace, are admitted into a 
kingdom that was never destroyed. God and his 
well-beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit and angels 
who never fell, kept the kingdom for redeemed men. 
Christ extends the blessing of the kingdom to as 
many as will believe, to as many as the Father will 
give him in return for the price he paid for their 
redemption. Admission into this kingdom is not 
determined by the righteousness of those who seek 
it, not by the edict of the King, not by any law, not 
by any form, nor by association with any institu- 
tion ; admission is determined by relationship with 
Christ, whose is " the kingdom, and the power, and 
the glory." The commission of the apostles is very 



270 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

plain, " I appoint unto you a kingdom (as the Father 
hath appointed unto me a kingdom) to sit on thrones 
and to eat and drink with me in my kingdom." The 
fullness of the kingdom is the likeness of the king. 
The blessing of the kingdom is not a new patch 
on an old garment, not new wine in an old bottle, 
but to be a new creature in Christ Jesus, to have a 
new life by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. 

Nineteen hundred years of faith and patience, 
and conflict, and martyrdom, and prayer, and fel- 
lowship in work, have passed, and the kingdom 
keeps coming. It has already come. It is a reality 
to a " number numberless," who have already had 
" ministered unto them an abundant entrance into 
the everlasting kingdom." 

The miraculous ministry of the Messiah, begin- 
ning with the mystery of the Incarnation and clo- 
sing with the mystery of the Resurrection, fulfilling 
the prophetic visions and executing the purposes of 
God to establish a spiritual kingdom among men, 
gives place to the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who, 
through the Church, should continue the work 
which should finally restore the kingdom of God as 
a kingdom of grace, and exalt to undisputed su- 
premacy this Messiah " whom God hath set at his 
own right hand in the heavenly places, far above 
all principality, and power, and might, and do- 
minion, and every name that is named, not only in 
this world, but also in that which is to come : and 
hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 271 

be the head over all things to the Church, which 
is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." 

A handful of faithful followers, with confidence 
in their ascended Lord, and relying upon the promise 
of the Spirit, waited in a little upper room, neither 
disheartened nor discouraged by the unbelieving 
mob that crowded the streets of Jerusalem. Yery 
soon their faith was rewarded with flaming tongues, 
and the conquest of the world began. 

The kingdom of God is not identified with any 
state or nation. It is a federation of redeemed 
men, a federation of believers, a federation of loyal 
followers of Jesus Christ, who is the head of the 
spiritual body, and heir to the throne of the king- 
dom of God, among all people, and kindred, and 
tongues, and tribes, regardless of their earthly al- 
legiance. 

This belief is the inspiration and spirit of mis- 
sions. The people of God, the citizens of the king- 
dom of God, whatever may be their nationality, are 
moved by holy zeal, and by loyalty to their king, 
to extend the kingdom that they love and to pro- 
claim its true blessedness to every creature. 

The scepter of earthly power departed from 
Judah, the throne of David is occupied by his 
greater Son, and henceforth the history of the 
Church is the history of the kingdom of God. This 
new spiritual kingdom was set up in the midst of 
the proudest and most powerful empire that had 
ever reached for universal dominion. The kingdom 



272 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

of Christ must succeed through much suffering, and 
it has suffered with a courage that only confident 
faith could inspire. By turns persecuted, courted, 
and corrupted by Rome, hampered by the compli- 
cations of civil and ecclesiastical powers, subduing 
cities which soon yielded to the fascinations of 
fleshly lusts, almost lost in the dark ages, yet ever 
nurtured by a remnant that kept the oracles and 
kept its faith, the Church, the retarded kingdom of 
God, is born again, and the dawn of the Reforma- 
tion reveals the hidden destiny, and assures the 
triumph of the kingdom of God. 

As a part of the Church of Christ, bearing our 
part of responsibility for the final triumph of the 
kingdom of God, we may claim no small share of 
the labors and of the fruits of the Reformation. 
This free republic that honors us with citizenship, 
and that protects our religious liberties, was founded 
by our Reformation ancestors and upon Reformation 
principles. Together with other Christian nations, 
who have received their civilization from the Refor- 
mation, we control the destinies of the world. 
The providences of God that mark the advent of 
this new century, make American citizenship a 
grave responsibility. These providences have 
opened doors for Christian missions that give assur- 
ance to our strongest faith, and call for the best 
service of fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God. 

It will not be necessary for me to detain you 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 273 

with any application of the subject to which I have 
asked your attention. We have a history of which 
we are not ashamed. We have an equipment full 
of efficiency; and we have opportunities which 
should suggest a deep sense of responsibility. 

But I am reminded that an order of the Assembly 
will devote a whole day to the consideration of 
Presbyterian progress and of Presbyterian prospect. 
Kepresentatives, well qualified for this special serv- 
ice, have been chosen, and we wait with confidence 
for their reports and prophecies. 

A special appointment of the Assembly has given 
me an opportunity to visit many centers of in- 
fluence, and to see the work that our beloved 
Church is doing to advance the kingdom of God. 
And in closing I desire to bear testimony to a few 
things that should give us great encouragement at 
the opening of the new century. 

I have greatly enjoyed the close fellowship of 
my brethren. I have found a deep reverence for 
the Word of God and a courageous defense of its 
revealed truths. I have found loyal support of the 
ancient Confession that stands for the sovereignty 
of God, and proclaims the laws of the kingdom of 
his love and grace. I have found only faithful serv- 
ice and fraternal spirit. The Church is peace. 
The Church is one in heart and hope, and purpose. 
There are no roots of bitterness springing up to 
trouble us. With united purpose the Church is set 
for the defense of the gospel of the kingdom of God. 

18 



274 TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 

We have a noble ministry, nearly eight thousand 
strong, and the depleted ranks are being filled by 
colleges and seminaries, whose faithful work praises 
them. 

The ministry is strengthened and supported by a 
noble eldership, nearly thirty thousand strong, 
whose service in both Church and State, is for the 
glory of God. Ministers and elders lead a noble 
membership, more than a million strong, a body of 
devoted believers whose lives and generous gifts 
testify to their fidelity. And not our least joy and 
hope is our reserve, a million and a half strong, 
that is being trained in ten thousand Sabbath- 
schools, by devoted teachers, for work unto the 
kingdom of God. 

The highway that unites the cities of the Pacific 
Coast, winds through mountains and valleys of sur- 
passing beauty. The picture that lingers in my 
memory is Mount Shasta, rising fourteen thousand 
feet above the sea, standing alone in the plain, 
wrapped in its own solitude and in its mantle of 
snow. I gazed upon its silent glory for hours, and 
at sunset, when the mountain was taking on richer 
colors, and revealing greater charms, we were very 
close to it, when suddenly it disappeared. Before I 
could recover from my surprise, the shadow was 
gone, and the mountain stood out boldly in its full 
beauty. We had passed near the base of a bleak 
iioot-hill, and this low foot-hill had hidden the great 



TWENTIETH CENTURY ADDRESSES 275 

mountain. Thus, we lose sight of the kingdom of 
God. The foot-hills of our unbelief and needless 
strife, and worldliness, hide from our vision "the 
mountain of the house of the Lord that is to be 
established in the top of the mountains and exalted 
above the hills," " unto which people shall flow, 
and to which many nations shall come and say, let 
us go up to the mountain of the Lord." 



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